The measurement of resilience with a scanning probe microscope

A new technique is described whereby force-distance curves, obtained from a Scanning Probe Microscope (SPM), have been used to measure the resilience of a range of elastomeric samples. The results are compared to measurements obtained by rebound tests and compression tests. For all of the samples tested, the SPM ranked them in the same order as the rebound test and the compression test although the absolute values were quite different. The effect of probe size, maximum load, and rate of test were also investigated. Probe size, as tested in the compression test, had a negligible effect on resilience, whereas increasing the maximum load or decreasing the rate of test generally led to an increase in the energy of deformation and a resultant decrease in resilience. However, within the range of speeds and loads normally used with an SPM the resilience remained essentially constant.