Correction of the hardness measurement for pile-up materials with a nano indentation machine

Measurements of the elastic modulus and hardness using a nano indentation machine rely on the equation for the fitted contact area, which is valid for only sink-in materials. For most soft engineering materials that involve pile-up behavior rather than sink-in, the contact area equation underestimates the contact area and thus overestimates the elastic modulus and hardness. This study proposes a correction method to amend erroneous hardness measurements in pile-up situations. The method is a supplemental derivation to the original hardness measurement with the known value of the elastic modulus. The method was examined for soft engineering metals, Al 6061 T6 and C 12200, via tensile tests, nano indentation tests, impression observations, and finite element analysis. The proposed technique shows reasonable agreement with the analytical results accounting for strain gradient plasticity from a previous study.