New Instrumented Indentation Methods to Assess Mechanical Properties

Instrumented indentation method approach was used for determining mechanical properties of metals for more than two decades. These mthods use spherical or sharp (Cone, Pyramid, Berkovich, Knoop) indenters in order to perform instrumented indentations. A load and displacement sensors were mounted to measure the applied load and the indenter displacement. The obtained applied load – indenter displacement F-δ, is used as supplement information which let to determine yield stress, hardening exponent etc. The unloading part is used for determining the Young modulus. This method was also applied to non homogenous materials such as bi-layer materials and Functionally Graded Materials (FGMs). Different properties such as the layer thickness, yield stress and hardness profile were characterized. In this paper a review of the used methods which assess different mechanical properties of homogenous and non homogenous materials.