Scratch testing of metals and polymers: Experiments and numerics

An experimental and numerical study of the scratch test performed on metals and polymers was conducted. The materials tested, being both metallic and polymeric, were related to the well known Johnson’s parameter, often used to correlate indentation experiments. The aim was to determine whether it was possible to use the numerical approach presented by Wredenberg and Larsson [F. Wredenberg, P.-L. Larsson, On the numerics and correlation of scratch testing, Journal of Mechanics of Materials and Structures 2 (2006) 573–594] to describe the scratch mechanism and of course also to investigate whether or not important scratch quantities can be determined with sufficient accuracy from standard scratch experiments.