Contact response of ceramics

Instrumented indentation mechanics and its applications to ceramics characterisation are described and discussed. Instrumented nanoindentation has become an outstanding tool for characterising surfaces and is routinely used in industry and university. The article reviews important procedures and concepts that have proved to be very useful to analyse the contact response of ceramics (elastic–plastic loading, indentation strains and stresses, crack generation, composite response of coated pieces). Examples are used to illustrate the very wide range of studies that can be carried out.