Elastic-plastic behaviour of materials by spherical indentation

The nanoindentation technique is extensively used for characterisation of mechanical properties in small volumes. Due to its local character, the nanoindentation technique has also recently been used for the determination of local stress-strain (elastic-plastic) properties. For this, spherical indentation is used and representative stress and strain values according to Tabor are calculated.

The following application report presents the results of this method in several applications including spherical particles, welds, mechanical intermixing and polymers.