Instrumented Indentation Technique: New Nondestructive Measurement Technique for Flow Stress-Strain and Residual Stress of Metallic Materials

Instrumented indentation technique is a new way to evaluate nondestructive such mechanical properties as flow properties, residual stress and fracture toughness by analyzing indentation load-depth curves. This study evaluated quantitatively the flow properties of steels and residual stress of weldments. First, flow properties can be evaluated by defining a representative stress and strain from analysis of deformation behavior beneath the rigid spherical indenter and the parameters obtained from instrumented indentation tests. For estimating residual stress, the deviatoric-stress part of the residual stress affects the indentation load-depth curve, so that by analyzing the difference between the residual-stress-induced indentation curve and residual-stress-free curve, the quantitative residual stress of the target region can be evaluated. The algorithm for flow property evaluation was verified by comparison with uniaxial tensile test and the residual stress evaluation model was compared to mechanical cutting and ED-XRD results.