A mechanical response of the material to pressing an indenter into the surface layer allows us to estimate the mechanical properties of the surface. The indentation of multilayered materials gives rise to a problem of evaluating the contact area required to calculate the mechanical properties. In the case of indenter penetration to a shallow depth, the shape of the indenter in the vicinity of its tip also becomes an influential factor.Pressing an indenter in the form of a truncated cone into a rigid layer on a non-linearly elastic substrate was investigated by the finite element method.
It has been found that the contact area Ac at a shallow indentation depth corresponds to a cylindrical indenter, which with increasing depth asymptotically turns into a cone. The results were used to process the data of experiments on the indentation of rigid inhomogeneous nanocoats on the surface of an elastic polymer.
Morozov I.A., Izyumov R.I. Challenges of reliable AFM-tip shape reconstruction and approximation // Microscopy Research and Technique. 2024. V. 87. N. 1. P. 105-113. (Q1)
Morozov I.A., Belyaev A.Yu., Izyumov R.I. Indentation of a layer on an elastic substrate: influence of coating thickness and modulus of elasticity // Computational mechanics of continuous media. 2024 №4