A method to separate and quantify the effects of indentation size, residual stress and plastic damage when mapping properties using instrumented indentation

Instrumented indentation is a convenient and increasingly rapid method of high resolution mapping of surface properties. There is, however, significant untapped potential for the quantification of these properties, which is only possible by solving a number of serious issues that affect the absolute values for mechanical properties obtained from small indentations. The three most pressing currently are the quantification of: the indentation size effect (ISE), residual stress, and pile-up and sink-in—which is itself affected by residual stress and ISE. Hardness based indentation mapping is unable to distinguish these effects.

We describe a procedure that uses an elastic modulus as an internal reference and combines the information available from an indentation modulus map, a hardness map, and a determination of the ISE coefficient (using self-similar geometry indentation) to correct for the effects of stress, pile up and the indentation size effect, to leave a quantified map of plastic damage and grain refinement hardening in a surface. This procedure is used to map the residual stress in a cross-section of the machined surface of a previously stress free metal. The effect of surface grinding is compared to milling and is shown to cause different amounts of work hardening, increase in residual stress, and surface grain size reduction. The potential use of this procedure for mapping coatings in cross-section is discussed.