Modeling of nanoindentation of bulk and thin film by finite element method

Thin film deposition and coating techniques have been developed for tribological applications and constitute an optimized material solution. Nanoindentation testing at very low load is a successful technique for studying the mechanical properties of ceramic, metal and intermetallic thin films. Hardness, yield strength and elasticity modulus are the basic parameters for mechanical design. Nanohardness measurements are attractive because they can be performed on a variety of materials, metals and ceramic, and provide information on its elastic and plastic deformation behaviour. These surface properties are relevant to mechanical design as they influence the wear resistance of coated surfaces and are the mechanical properties, which are used to characterize and improve coatings. Finite element method (FEM) has been widely used for numerical simulation of hardness tests on bulk material in order to analyze its deformation response and investigate the influence of indenter geometry, friction and material elastic and plastic properties. The purpose of the present work was to investigate the nanoindentation process by numerical simulation with ABAQUS of thin film and bulk materials as pure copper, titanium and iron, considering hardening law. The numerical results for these materials compared well with the experimental results. However, the simulation results depended greatly on the mesh size, indenter tip radius and the hardening law imposed to the numerical model, and very little on friction coefficient.