Mechanical characterisation of material properties using instrumented indentation experiments

The proposed work makes use of an inverse analysis approach to identify the mechanical properties of a material sample which can be described by means of the elastic modulus, yield stress and strain-hardening parameter. The particularity of the proposed work is the exploitation of the indentation curve as well as the imprint left by the indenter at the end of the test as input information to the inverse analysis. The numerical simulations required by the analysis are carried out by means of the finite element software Abaqus. This paper describes initial work carried out to validate the robustness of the inverse procedure for stainless steel samples using computer-generated data.