Elastic/Crystalline Viscoplastic Finite Element Analysis of Super Micro Indentation Process.

Abstract

Recently, the super-micro hardness test has been developed to evaluate the material property of very thin surface layer material of meso scale thickness, such as μm. This test employs the very small indentation load, 2∼500 mN, and the indentation depth, sub-μm∼10μm. The material characterization of very thin surface layer, by differentiation from the matrix and binding layer, is very complicated. The computational simulation scheme by employing the elastic/crystalline viscoplastic finite element code and experimental verification is developed to provide the reliable material property determination in this paper.