To characterize the elastic-plastic properties of thin film materials on elastic-plastic substrates,a simple theory model was proposed,which included three steps:dimensionless analysis,finite element modeling and data fitting.The dimensionless analysis was applied to deriving two preliminary nondimensional relationships of the material properties,and finite element modeling and data fitting were carried out to establish their explicit forms.Numerical indentation tests were carried out to examine the effectiveness of the proposed model and the good agreement shows that the proposed theory model can be applied in practice.
The interfacial adhesive properties ofpolypropylene/stainless steel were studied by the blister test. The polypropylene film with a squared free-standing window was pressured by oil from one side of film. The corresponding deformation field was observed by a digital speckle correlation method. The experimental results show that the squared film deforms and debonds from stainless steel with the increase of pressure. The debonding of the squared film in initiates from the center of edge and extends to the comer, and then the deformation of film evolves from square to circle shape. The interfacial adhesive energy of polypropylene/stainless steel is （22.60±1.55） J/m2, which is in agreement with that measured by film with a circular window.
In this paper, a modified shear-lag model is developed to calculate the surface crack density in thermal barrier coatings（TBCs）. The mechanical properties of TBCs are also measured to quantitatively assess their surface crack density. Acoustic emission（AE） and digital image correlation methods are applied to monitor the surface cracking in TBCs under tensile loading. The results show that the calculated surface crack density from the modified model is in agreement with that obtained from experiments. The surface cracking process of TBCs can be discriminated by their AE characteristics and strain evolution. Based on the correlation of energy released from cracking and its corresponding AE signals, a linear relationship is built up between the surface crack density and AE parameters, with the slope being dependent on the mechanical properties of TBCs.
An inverse method for extracting the elastic-plastic properties of metallic thin films from instrumented sharp indentation has been proposed in terms of dimensional analysis and finite element modeling. A wide range of materials with different elastic modulus, yield strength, and strain-hardening exponent were examined.Similar to the Nix-Gao model for the depth dependence of hardness H,the relationship between elastic modulus E and indentation depth h can be expressed as By combiningthese two formulas, we find that there is a relationship between yield stress and indentation depth h：where σyO is the yield strength associated with the strain-hardening exponent n, the true hardness Ho and the true elastic modulus Eo.is constant, whichis only related to n, and hH and hE are characteristic lengths for hardness and elastic modulus. The results obtained from inverse analysis show that the elastic-plastic properties of thin films can be uniquely extracted from the solution of this relationship when the indentation size effect has to be taken into account.
The reverse analysis provides a convenient method to determine four elastic-plastic parameters through an indentation curve such as Young s modulus E, hardness H, yield strength σy and strain hardening exponent n. In this paper, mathematical analysis on a reverse algorithm from Dao model （Dao et al., Acta Mater., 2001, 49, 3899） was carried out, which thought that only when 20 ≤E＊/σ0.033≤ 26 and 0.3n≤ 0.5, the reverse algorithm would yield two solutions of n by dimensionless function Π2. It is shown that, however, there are also two solutions of n when 20≤E＊/σ0.033≤ 26 and 0≤n0.1. A unique n can be obtained by dimensionless function Π3 instead of Π2 in these two ranges. E and H can be uniquely determined by a full indentation curve, and σy can be determined if n is unique. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis on obtaining n from dimensionless function Π3 or Π2 has been made.
Yongli HuangXiaofang LiuYichun ZhouZengsheng MaChunsheng Lu
