STUDY ON INDENTATION SIZE EFFECT

OF METALLIC SPECIMEN
A PROJECT REPORT SUBMITTED
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENT FOR THE
DEGREE OF

BACHELOR OF ENGINEERING
IN
MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

BY

ADARSH KEJARIWAL
ROLL: 001411201068

UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF

PROF. ABHIJIT CHANDA

DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

JADAVPUR UNIVERSITY
KOLKATA – 700032
2017-18

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 CERTIFICATE
It is certified that the work contained in the project report titled “TRIBOLOGICAL
PROPERTIES OF NANO-METAL MATRIX COMPOSITES,” by “UTTAM BISWAS,”
has been carried out under my supervision and that this work has not been submitted
elsewhere for a degree.

Date: Signature of Supervisor

Prof. Goutam Sutradhar

Mechanical Engineering
Jadavpur University
Kolkata-700032

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I take this opportunity to express my profound gratitude and deep regards to my project
guide “Prof. ABHIJIT CHANDA,” for his exemplary guidance, monitoring and constant
encouragement throughout the course of the project. The blessing, help and guidance
given by him time to time will carry us a long journey of life on which we are about to
embark.
I would also like to thank my parents and my friends who are involved directly and
indirectly in successful completion of the present work.

Date: Adarsh
Kejariwal
Roll: 101411201068

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 ABSTRACT
The purpose of this investigation was to study the load dependence of the microhardness
in Copper (cu). The results show that the measured hardness depends crucially on the
load, which indicates the influence of the indentation size effect (ISE). The load
dependence of hardness is analysed by using the traditional Meyer’s law. The
experimental results verify the theoretical correlation.

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 CONTENTS
Serial Topic Page No.
No.
1 Introduction 1-3
2 Experimental procedure 4-5
3 Results 6-7
4 Conclusions 8
5 References -

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 1. INTRODUCTION
The hardness of a material is a poorly defined term which has many meanings depending
upon the experience of the person involved. In general, hardness usually implies a
resistance to deformation, and for metals the property is a measure of their resistance to
permanent or plastic deformation. To a person concerned with the mechanics of materials
testing, hardness is most likely to mean the resistance to indentation, and to the design
engineer it often means an easily measured and specified quantity which indicates
something about the strength and heat treatment of the metal. There are three general
types of hardness measurements depending upon the manner in which the test is
conducted. These are (1) scratch hardness, (2) indentation hardness, and (3) rebound, or
dynamic, hardness. Only indentation hardness is of major engineering interest for metals.

Hardness is usually measured on conventional

microhardness machines with Vickers or Knoop diamond indenters. The Vickers
hardness test uses a square-base diamond pyramid as the indenter. The included angle
between opposite faces of the pyramid is 136°. This angle was chosen because it
approximates the most desirable ratio of indentation diameter to ball diameter in the

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Brinell hardness test. Because of the shape of the indenter this is frequently called the
diamond pyramid hardness test. The diamond-pyramid hardness number (DPH), or
Vickers hardness number (VHN, or VPH), is defined as the load divided by the surface
area of the indentation. In practice, this area is calculated from microscopic measurements
of the lengths of the diagonals of the impression. The DPH may be determined from the
following equation,

where L = applied load, Kgf

d = average length of diagonals, mm

Indentation hardness of homogeneous materials should be constant [1]. However, at low

indentation loads, problems arise from the load dependence on hardness and from the
measurement uncertainty due to small indentation size. The indenter gives a
geometrically similar indentation so that the measured hardness should be independent of
the applied load. But when a very low load is used, the measured hardness is usually high;
with an increase in test load, the measured hardness decreases. Such a phenomenon is
referred to as “normal” indentation size effect (ISE) (Fig 1). Using a load dependent
hardness in material characterization may result in some unreliable conclusions [2].

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The ISE may be caused by the testing equipment. The experimental error resulting from
the measurement of indentation diagonals as a result of the limitations of the resolution of
the objective lens and determination of the applied load belongs to this group. Another
source of ISE are intrinsic properties of the tested material (work hardening during
indentation, load to initiate plastic deformation, indentation elastic recovery, elastic
resistance of the materials). The effect of machining-induced residually stressed surface
(grinding, polishing) of specimen and indenter/specimen friction are also explanations of
the ISE.
Nevertheless, even if these parasitic influences and errors are removed, there still may be
some dependence of hardness on indentation depth. In materials that are able to strain
harden, it is expected that geometrically necessary dislocations (those which form in
response to the imposed shape change at the surface) are created under the indenter tip
during a typical indentation test. At shallow penetration depths, the dislocations would
form over a relatively small volume, resulting in a high density of dislocations. These
dislocations inhibit further penetration, thus increasing the apparent hardness of the
material. As the penetration depth increases, the dislocation density decreases because the
volume over which they are distributed becomes greater. At extremely large penetrations,
the effect of these geometrically
necessary dislocations is small, and the measured hardness approaches the intrinsic
hardness of the material (hardness at infinite depth) [4].

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 Fig 2. Plastic strain gradients are caused by the geometry of deformation

Meyer proposed an empirical relation between the load and the size of the indentation.
This relationship is usually called the Meyer’s law [5]. The Meyer’s law is simply an
empirical expression to describe the relationship between the indentation load F and the
resultant indentation size d:
F = Ad n (1)
where A is a constant parameter for a given material and n is Meyer’s index (or number),
which is a measure of the ISE. Meyer’s law has been suitable for the representation of
experimental data, and Meyer’s index n has been experimentally observed to be between
1.5 and 2.0.

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 2. EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE
The material used in this study was Copper (Cu). It was first polished in the laboratory.
At first Vickers Hardness test was carried out using the Vickers tester in the App. Mech.
Lab of Mechanical Department, Jadavpur University. The loads used were 5, 10, 20 and
30 Kgf.
The dwell time was 15 sec and the magnification was 40x.

For each load, 3 readings of diagonals (d1 and d2) were taken and the average is found.
The experimental data is given in the Table 1.
Table 1

LOAD F (Kgf) d = (d1 + d2 )/2 HV davg (mm) HVavg

(mm)
30 0.732 103.82 0.7336 103.35
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 30 0.732 103.82 0.7336 103.35
0.734 103.26
0.735 102.98
20 0.599 103.36 0.598 103.71
0.597 104.06
0.598 103.71
10 0.422 104.13 0.4213 104.375
0.421 104.62
0.421 104.62
5 0.295 106.54 0.2946 106.90
0.295 106.54
0.294 107.27
As there was no significant change in the hardness, the experiment was further carried out
at lower loads. To carry out the experiment at further lower loads, the Vickers tester of
Central Glass and Ceramics Research Institute was used.
The dwell time was 15 sec and magnification was 40x.
All indentation tests were carried out under ambient laboratory conditions.

For each load, 3 readings of diagonals (d1 and d2) were taken and the average is found.
The experimental data is given in the Table 2.
Table 2

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 LOAD F (Kgf) d = (d1 + d2 )/2 HV davg (μm) HVavg
(μm)
2.5 210.575 109.1 206.963 109.8
204.65 110.7
205.665 109.6
2 184.315 109.1 183.923 109.6
184.91 108.4
182.545 111.3
1 127.555 113.9 127.728 113.63
128.52 112.2
127.11 114.8
0.5 87.945 119.8 88.22 117.76
87.8 116.2
88.915 117.3
0.3 68.32 119.1 68.483 118.63
67.605 121.7
69.525 115.1
0.1 39.165 120.9 39.2 120.67
39.26 120.3
39.175 120.8
3. RESULTS
A curve was plotted between Load vs HV. It is shown below.

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It can be seen that the hardness decreases with the increasing indentation test load. This
dependence of hardness on the applied load is known as the ISE. Here, Error bars
characterize the accuracy.
The load dependence of hardness was analyzed by using the traditional Meyer’s law (eq
1). The parameters were obtained from the curve fitting (Fig. 3) of experimental results of
indentations (log F versus log davg).

Fig 3. Log F vs Log davg

Table 3. Regression analysis results of experimental data
SAMPLE n Log A A (Kgf/mm-n) CORRELATION
FACTOR
Cu 1.941 + 1.732 + 53.951 0.9998
0.04978 0.004087

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The A and n values in Eq. (1) were determined by linear regression analysis and the
results were summarized in Table 3. The data show a linear relationship, indicating that
the traditional Meyer’s law is suitable for describing microindentation data. The Meyer’s
index n obtained experimentally is less than 2, which indicates that hardness is dependent
on test loads [6].

4. CONCLUSIONS
1. The measured hardness of Cu depends crucially on the load, which indicates the
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influence of the indentation size effect (ISE).
2. It means that the measured hardness values increase with decreasing indentation loads.
3. Meyer’s law has proved to be satisfactory for the description of experimental data with
a correlation coefficient of 0.9998.
4. The Meyer’s index n obtained experimentally is less than 2, which indicates that
hardness is dependent on test loads.

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 REFERENCES
1. Indentation Size Effects in Ductile and Brittle Materials: Jaroslav Menčík and Martin
Elstner.
2. The Micro-hardness of Heat Treated Carbon Steel: Jozef PETRÍK.
3. SEBASTIAN, S.—KHADAR, M. A.: J. Mater. Sci., 40, 2005, p. 1655.
4. THE ROLE OF INDENTATION DEPTH ON THE MEASURED HARDNESS OF
MATERIALS: MELISSA SHELL DE GUZMAN, GABI NEUBAUER, PAUL FLINN,
AND WILLIAM D. NIX.

5. E. Mayer, Phys. Z,9 (1908) 66.

6. Indentation size effect: reality or artefact? : A. lOST, R. BIGOT

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