Material characterization based on dual indenters

Extensive large strain-large deformation finite element analyses were carried out to investigate the response of elasto-plastic materials obeying power law-strain hardening during the loading and unloading process of instrumented indentation with conical indenters of different apex angles. The relationships between the characteristics of the indentation load-displacement curves and the elasto-plastic material properties were computationally established. A reverse analysis algorithm based on load-displacement curves obtained from dual indenters was presented. It was demonstrated that the proposed reverse analysis algorithm can uniquely recover the elasto-plastic material properties from the load-displacement curves of two conical indenters with different apex angles. The numerical results obtained are in good agreement with published values.