Determination of Stress-Strain Curve through Berkovich Indentation Testing
Instrumented indentation testing is a technique widely used in different materials to evaluate the penetration depth in function of the indenter load. Considering Berkovich indenter, this methodology has been used to determine mechanical properties such as hardness, Young modulus and a stress versus strain curve of the elastic-plastic behaviour under compression of the tested materials. However, the implementation of this technique to evaluate mechanical properties and also its results have still brought doubts on research areas. Nowadays, the use of a numerical methodology able to evaluate the stress and strain fields during indentation cycle can lead to a more secure interpretation. The aim of this work was to simulate the Berkovich indentation testing and to propose a methodology to extract the stress-strain curve through experimental and numerical analyses. The obtained numerical results for the load-displacement curve were quite similar to the experimental curve presented in the literature.