Investigation of Practical Hardness Information through Combined Systematic and Numerical Analyses

Indentation tests have been extensively used in assessing a material's hardness.In the current work, the minimum indent spacing, the minimum distance between the indent center and the edge of the specimen and the minimum thickness of the specimen were obtained by substantial mechanically instrumented indentation tests to quantify the factors that might influence the hardness measurement.Moreover, two-dimensional nonlinear FEA was performed to observe the size of the plastic zones lying underneath the indents and the interaction between them.In addition to the plastic zone study, the effect of the hardening modulus (strain hardening effect) was explored in these simulations.The simulations propose a separation distance between indents, based on the indent size, to avoid interaction between plastic zones.A change in the size of the plastic zone can be found, and quantified, as the hardening modulus is varied.