Semester

Summer

Date of Graduation

2011

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MS

College

Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources

Department

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Committee Chair

Bruce Kang.

Abstract

Various types of indentation methods have been used for the determination of mechanical properties of material; nevertheless, conventional indentation test units are restricted by the geometry of the samples. It is difficult to obtain the mechanical properties from non-flat surface objects. In this research, based on an in-house developed load-based micro-indentation test method, a suitable flexible micro-indentation system was developed to determine material mechanical properties such as hardness and elastic modulus of test samples with arbitrary surface geometry.;The focus is in developing a flexible micro-indentation unit. Due to nonlinearity of the system compliance and possible change of indentation direction during testing, an in-situ calibration methodology is developed to obtain the correct mechanical properties of the testing material. To validate the capability of the flexible micro-indentation instrument, aluminum 6061, bronze 932 and H13 tool steel were tested with various indentation arm lengths and angles such as 0°, 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° for Young's modulus measurement. In each case, the data were reprocessed with the in-situ calibration method and accurate results were obtained.

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