Instrumented Indentation Test for Materials Science and Industry: 2nd Edition

Dear Colleagues,

The first volume of this Special Issue, titled “Instrumented Indentation Test: an Aiding Tool for Materials Science and Industry”, completed in 2022, contains eleven outstanding contributions and constitutes an invaluable compendium of papers on the fundamentals and novelties of IIT pertaining to scientific research and industry. Its success has encouraged the launch of this second volume, which shares the main goals and missions as the first volume centered around stimulating the application of IIT to (a) progress material science at various scales of the microstructure; (b) further expand the available database on the indentation properties of engineering materials based on the performances directly measured on the manufactured products without sectioning; (c) provide more appropriate and/or more efficient post-processing procedures of indentation curves to overcome the current ISO 14577 limitations (such as those concerning the testing of engineering materials and products affected by residual stresses, as well as pile-up and sink-in events). Furthermore, on-field or in-line processing case studies, at any stage of the production process, are warmly encouraged in view of their direct impact on the sustainability of future manufacturing processes to achieve more efficient products. Such products may range from mechatronic devices (MEMs, NENs, thin films, and multilayers) to multidimensional metallic, ceramic, or composite parts, including integral additively manufactured elements, welded joints, or foams. The latter call used for more robust testing methods can account for pressure effects on indentation properties. The macro-instrumented indentation test, although less popular than nanoindentation, deserves more attention, and thus more research studies on its industrial applications are warranted, as it can provide tensile-like properties without any indentation size effect, and it has less stringent requirements on surface roughness than the nanoindentation test. Papers on the latter topic are expected, but additional contributions could be centered around the correlations between indentation properties across multiple scales, as this will help us achieve a better understanding of indentation size effects, material anisotropy, elastoplastic behavior, and the role played by unavoidable short- and long-range residual stresses in engineering materials and products. To promote comparability among residual stress measurements, it is recommended that IIT is performed under displacement control by annexing detailed information on slicing/sectioning (if any) of the original manufactured product and on the indentation modulus, which turns out to be an important indicator of residual stress in materials.

Prof. Dr. Giovanni Maizza
Guest Editor

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• multiscale (nano-, micro-, and macro-) instrumented indentation tests (nIIT, mIIT, and MIIT)
• theory and modeling of indentation mechanics
• hot indentation, enhanced multifield-assisted contact phenomena, and contact area
• multidimensional (wire, sheet, thin films, multilayer, bulk, foam, and composite) metals, alloys, ceramics, materials, castings, wrought products, and additive manufacturing products
• similar and dissimilar welded joints
• phenomena: elastic, plastic, superplastic, superelastic, creep, strain rate effects, pressure effect, activated plasticity, residual stress, dynamic, impact, and crushing
• in-line manufacturing and on-service mechanical monitoring via indentation properties for industry
• nanocrystalline materials
• indentation curves and alternate post-processing methods (other than ISO 14577 code’s ones)
• novel calibration methods and true hardness