Indenter surface area and hardness determination by means of a FEM-supported simulation of nanoindentation

Moreover, the indenter surface area functions of Vickers and Berkovich indenters are determined experimentally/analytically, by nanoindentations on Si(100) reference material of known Martens hardness. Applying these functions, Martens and Vickers hardness are determined correspondingly for various materials and they are compared to hardness values obtained by the “HANI” algorithm. Significant deviations occur, if the hardness of the reference material is quite different than the hardness of the test pieces.