Finite Element Analysis of Deformation Due to Ball Indentation and Evaluation of Tensile Properties of Tempered P92 Steel

Abstract

Ball indentation (BI) technique has been effectively used to evaluate the tensile properties with minimal volume of material. In the present investigation, BI test carried out on P92 steel (9Cr-0.5Mo-1.8W), using 0.76 mm diameter silicon nitride ball indenter was modeled using finite element (FE) method and analyzed. The effect of test temperature [300 K and 923 K (27 °C and 650 °C)], tempering temperature [1013 K, 1033 K, and 1053 K (740 °C, 760 °C, and 780 °C)], and coefficient of friction of steel (0.0 to 0.5) on the tensile strength and material pile-up was investigated. The stress and strain distributions underneath the indenter and along the top elements of the model have been studied to understand the deformation behavior. The tensile strength was found to decrease with increase in tempering and test temperatures. The increased pile-up around the indentation was attributed to the decrease in strain hardening exponent (n) with increase in the test temperature. The pile-up height determined from profilometry studies and FE analysis as well as the load depth curve from BI and FE analysis was in agreement. The maximum strain location below the indentation changes with the test temperature. Stress–strain curves obtained by conventional tensile, BI test, and representative stress–strain concepts of FE model were found exactly matching.