Mechanical characterisation of metals by indentation tests: an experimental verification study for on-site applications

Mechanical characterisation techniques have been recently proposed, which use as main information source the geometry of the residual imprint left on metal surfaces by hardness or instrumented indentation tests. Relevant identification procedures have been developed but the problem has been investigated, so far, mainly from a methodological point of view, exploiting pseudo-experimental data. This contribution presents the results of a verification study based on the real deformation measurements, collected from tests performed at scales consistent with those of structural applications. It is shown that the recovered mechanical properties compare satisfactorily well with those resulting from traditional tensile tests.