Improvement of instrumented indentation test accuracy by data augmentation with electrical contact resistance

Instrumented Indentation Test allows thorough surface multi-scale mechanical characterisation by depth -sensing the indenter penetration and correlating it with the indenter-sample contact area and the applied force. Localised plastic phenomena at the indentation edge, i.e. pile-up and sink-in, may bias the characterisa-tion results. Current approaches attempt correcting related systematic errors by numerical simulation and AFM-based techniques. However, they require careful tuning and complex and expensive experimental pro-cedures. This work proposes a methodology based on in-situ Electric Contact Resistance which augments information on the contact area and allows edge effect correction. The methodology is demonstrated and val-idated on industrially relevant metallic materials.& COPY; 2023 CIRP. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.