Initial Observation of Grain Orientation Dependent Nanoindentation Hardness of Al 6061 Gas-atomized Powder

The dependence-based relationship between the hardness of a small volume of polycrystalline metallic material and the material's crystallographic orientations has been established for systems. Typically, these systems are comprised of hexagonal close packed orientation, such as β-Ti alloys, dual-phase steels, and FeCrAl alloys. Recently, advances in nanoscale-instrumented indentation testing of materials via nanoindentation have shown that the grain orientation dependence of a measured hardness also holds for cubic structured polycrystalline metal systems.