Using elasto-plastic and fully plastic zones for determining applied indentation testload indentedisp lacement curve of an instrumented spherical

A new numerical approach for determining applied load- indenter isplacement of steels is presented. This method uses the instrumented spherical-indentation technique. This method is based on the classification of the F- curve (applied load indenter displacement curve) in three parts: Elastic, Elastoplastic and fully plastic domains. Using the finite element results for 35 modeled steels, a semi-empirical relation was obtained for elastoplastic domain. The yield stress was varied between 200 to 1200 MPa and the hardening exponent between 0 and 0.3. Comparison between the results obtained by the proposed model and the experimental results of 16NC6 and Z2CN180 steels confirm the interest of the method.

Keywords:

Spherical indentation , elastic-plastic analysis , steel , finite element method