Semi-analytical model for flat indentation of metal materials and its applications

The increasing use of small material components in a wide range of industrial fields necessitates the development of an accurate and robust indentation testing method. To this end, this paper proposes an Energy-density-equivalence for a Flat Indentation (E-FI) model based on the energy density equivalent principle. The proposed model describes the relationships among the material parameters of Hollomon’s power law (H-law), flat indenter diameter, energy, and indentation displacement. An E-FI Method (E-FIM) that determines the H-law parameters of materials through the indentation test is also developed. The energy-displacement curves forward-predicted by the E-FI model (based on known H-law parameters of materials) and the H-law parameters of materials given by the E-FIM (based on known energy-displacement curves) are consistent with the results of Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and the H-law parameters of materials used as the input for FEA, respectively. Using E-FIM, the goodness of fit for both stress–strain curves with H-law, predicted based on the displacement with 2% signal interference, and that for stress–strain curves without interference is more than 0.98. The stress–strain relations predicted by E-FIM were consistent with the results obtained via uniaxial tensile tests of ten ductile materials.