An experimental study on the contact problem of spherical indentation on the anisotropic elastic half-space based on imaging

Abstract

The contact problem of spherical indentation on the anisotropic elastic half-space is considered based on an experimental method in this work. The mechanical anisotropy is simulated by uniaxially stretching isotropic material made of silica gel. A special optical system is adopted to capture the contact images during indentation tests. The experimental results further prove the reasonability of the assumption that the contact area of spherical indentation on the anisotropic half-space is elliptical. And the results also show that the direction of strengthening by the uniaxial tension is consistent with the minor axis of the elliptical contact area. Such results validate the associated theory. Besides, the error analysis is made to examine the reliability of the fitting results, where the relative errors are less than 0.8% under the influence of given drawbacks. The indentation modulus can be determined through experimental data. Results show that the indentation modulus monotonically increases with the increase of the prestrain value. In the case of isotropy, the initial elastic modulus is determined under the assumption of incompressibility. The result by indentation test is in a good agreement with that by uniaxial tensile test.