Nanoindentation study of electrodeposited Ag thin coating: An inverse calculation of anisotropic elastic-plastic properties

A new inverse method was proposed to calculate the anisotropic elastic-plastic properties (flow stress) of electrodeposited Ag thin coating utilizing nanoindentation tests, previously reported inverse method for isotropic materials and three-dimensional (3-D) finite element analyses (FEA). Indentation depth was ~ 4% of coating thickness (~ 10 μm) to avoid substrate effect and different indentation responses were observed in the longitudinal (L) and the transverse (T) directions. The estimated elastic-plastic properties were obtained in the newly developed inverse method by matching the predicted indentation responses in the L and T directions with experimental measurements considering indentation size effect (ISE). The results were validated with tensile flow curves measured from free-standing (FS) Ag film. The current method can be utilized to characterize the anisotropic elastic-plastic properties of coatings and to provide the constitutive properties for coating performance evaluations.