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A study of indentation work in homogeneous materials

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Abstract

The work of indentation is investigated experimentally in this article. A method of using the elastic energy to extract the elastic modulus is proposed and verified. Two types of hardness related to the work of indentation are defined and examined: Hwtis defined as the total work required creating a unit volume of contact deformationand Hwp is defined as the plastic work required creating a unit volume of plastic deformation; experiments show that both hardness definitions are good choices for characterizing hardness. Several features that may provide significant insights in understanding indentation measurements are studied. These features mainly concern some scaling relationships in indentation measurements and the indentation size effects.

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  1. Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, 110016, People’s Republic of China

    Mengxi Tan

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Tan, M. A study of indentation work in homogeneous materials. Journal of Materials Research 21, 1363–1374 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2006.0168

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2006.0168

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