Investigation of the hydrostatic and plastic zones in hardness measurement using finite element simulation

The aim of this research was to evaluate the effect of the strain hardening of a homogeneous metallic material on the size and shape of hydrostatic and plastic zones forming in the indentation process with a spherical indenter. Precise measurements and finite element calculations (FEM) were performed for indentations and the results were compared with those of the expanding cavity model (ECM). We concluded that in the range of