−A newly developed hardness test based on equivalent indentation depth is currently expected to be the only hardness test method that enables seamless evaluations of hardness across different hardness scales in all load ranges from nanoscopic to macroscopic in an industrial friendly manner because the new method is free from the shortcomings of the instrumented indentation method, which require...

Psychophysical tests on human subjects showed that judgments of skin indentation depth made when the fingertip was indented at rates from 0.2 to 16 mm/sec were quite insensitive to changes in indentation velocity. Similar results were obtained on the forearm at indentation velocities of 0.4 to 16 mm/sec. Recordings were made from mechanoreceptors in the monkey's hand that were able to respond o...

Introduction Most in vivo indentation techniques are limited by the lack of adequate indentation on the plantar tissue. Without sufficient indentation into the soft tissue, only very little and less representative information can be obtained. The purpose of this study is hence to assess the effect of deformation depth on plantar tissue behavior and to establish a set rule of optimum indentation...

The aim of this paper is to show that damage mechanisms can account for the response of lamellar bone to nanoindentation tests, with particular regards to the decrease of indentation stiffness with increasing penetration depth and to the loss of contact stiffness during the unloading phase of the test. For this purpose, indentation experiments on bovine cortical bone samples along axial and tra...

Twenty-four slowly adapting type 1 (SA1) and 26 rapidly adapting (RA) cutaneous mechanoreceptive afferents in the rhesus monkey were studied with an array of independently controlled, punctate probes that covered an entire fingerpad. Each afferent had a receptive field (RF) on a single fingerpad and was studied at 73 skin sites (50 mm2). The entire array was lowered to 1.6 mm below the point of...

We conducted the measurement of the hardness-depth relationship of NiTi shape memory alloy with a sharp Berkovich indenter. Different from most ductile metals, NiTi reacts to the mechanical load of indentation through phase transition underneath the indentation tip. We found that the hardness decreases rapidly with the increase of the indentation depth and eventually approaches a constant. To u...

We introduce a novel method to correct for imperfect indenter geometry and frame compliance in instrumented indentation testing with a spherical indenter. Effective radii were measured directly from residual indentation marks at various contact depths (ratio of contact depth to indenter radius between 0.1 and 0.9) and were determined as a function of contact depth. Frame compliance was found to...

Load-depth curves of an unpoled Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT) film composite as a function of temperature were measured by nanoindentation technique. Its reduce modulus and hardness were calculated by the typical Oliver-Pharr method. Then the true modulus and hardness of the PZT film were assessed by decoupling the influence of substrate using methods proposed by Zhou et al. and Korsunsky et al...

The glabrous skin of the monkey's hand was stimulated with a waveform that indented the skin at a rate of 0.4 mm/sec, held the skin steadily or nearly steadily indented for 12 sec or longer, and then retracted back to the starting position. Recordings were made of activity in single afferent fibers in response to these stimuli. The average discharge frequency of 21 slowly adapting mechanorecept...

The effect of indenting the skin at different rates on the perceived intensity of the stimulus was studied by indenting the skin of the fingertip with two triangular waveforms, given as a pair. The subjects were asked to judge which member of the pair was more intense. Perceived intensity was found to increase both with the depth and the speed of the indentation. In contrast, changes in the rat...