indentation

This paper uses a method based on indentation to characterize a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) elastomer submerged in an organic solvent (decane, heptane, pentane, or cyclohexane).  An indenter is pressed into a disk of a swollen elastomer to a fixed depth, and the force on the indenter is recorded as a function of time.  By examining how the relaxation time scales with the radius of contact, one can differentiate the poroelastic behavior from the viscoelastic behavior.  By matching the relaxation curve measured experimentally to that derived from the theory of poroelasticity, o

Dear all,



I have modeled a cyclic ball indentation problem in
Abaqus. The sphere has been modeled as axisymmetric rigid surface while
the plate is axisymmetric deformable. The material data fed in for the
plate has been obtained from low cycle fatigue experiments and the
combined hardening model using half-cycle has beem employed.



Apart from this, the loading is displacement-controlled and sphere
is the master surface while the plate is slave surface. The other

When an indenter is pressed into a gel to a fixed depth, the solvent in the gel migrates, and the force on the indenter relaxes. Within the theory of poroelasticity, the force relaxation curves for indenters of several types are obtained in a simple form, enabling indentation to be used with ease as a method for determining the elastic constants and permeability of the gel. The method is demonstrated with a conical indenter on an alginate hydrogel.

I am looking for stress and displacement fields for indentation of an elastic half-space with a rigid spherical indenter. Anthony C. Fischer-Cripps provides closed form expressions (no derivations) for stress fields in his textbook "Introduction to Contact Mechanics" (Chapter 5, Page 88-89). He cites the work of M.T. Huber[1] which is in German (Annalen der Physik, 1904). 

Can someone point me to an English language reference for the analytical derivation of displacement and stress fields in the interior of the specimen ?

Indentation is widely used to measure material mechanical properties such as hardness, elastic modulus, and fracture toughness (for brittle materials). Can one use indentation to extract material elastoplastic properties directly from the measured force-displacement curves? Or simply, is it possible to obtain material stress-strain curves from the corresponding indentation load-displacement curves? In an upcoming paper in JMPS titled "On the uniqueness of measuring elastoplastic properties from indentation: The indistinguishable mystical materials," Xi Chen and colleagues at Columbia University and National Defense Academy, Japan show the existence of "mystical materials", which have distinct elastoplastic properties yet they yield almost identical indentation behaviors, even when the indenter angle is varied in a large range. These mystical materials are, therefore, indistinguishable by many existing indentation analyses unless extreme (and often impractical) indenter angles are used. The authors have established explicit procedures of deriving these mystical materials. In many cases, for a given indenter angle range, a material would have infinite numbers of mystical siblings, and the existence maps of the mystical materials are also obtained. Furthermore, they propose two alternative techniques to effectively distinguish these mystical materials. The study in this paper addresses the important question of the uniqueness of indentation test, as well as providing useful guidelines to properly use the indentation technique to measure material elastoplastic properties.

We report the loading and unloading force response of single living adherent fibroblasts due to large lateral indentation obtained by a two-component microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) force sensor. Strong hysteretic force response is observed for all the tested cells. For the loading process, the force response is linear (often with small initial non-linearity) to a deformation scale comparable to the undeformed cell size, followed by plastic yielding. In situ visualization of actin fibers (GFP) reveals that during the indentation process, actin network depolymerizes irreversibly at discrete locations to form well-defined circular actin agglomerates all over the cell, which explains the irreversibility of the force response. Similar agglomeration is observed when the cell is compressed laterally by a micro plate. The distribution pattern of the agglomerates strongly correlates with the arrangement of the actin fibers of the pre-indented cell. The size of the agglomerates increases with time as t^a  with a= 2~3 initially,   followed by a=.5~1. The higher growth rate suggests influx of actin into the agglomerates. The slower rate suggests a diffusive spreading, but the diffusion constant is two orders of magnitude lower than that of an actin monomer through the cytoplasm. Actin agglomeration has previously been observed due to biochemical treatment, gamma-radiation, and ischemic injury, and has been identified as a precursor to cell death. We believe, this is the first evidence of actin agglomeration due to mechanical stimuli. The study demonstrates that living cells may initiate similar functionalities in response to dissimilar mechanical and biochemical stimuli.