Stiffness Mapping and the Calculation of Fracture Toughness
Publication Number: 5990-8170EN
Publication Date: 2014.08.01
Language: English
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Stiffness Mapping and the Calculation of Fracture Toughness

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The determination of mechanical properties for small volumes of material is becoming increasingly important for many facets of science and technology, both industrial and academic. Nanoindentation equipment from Keysight Technologies, Inc. has been used in a variety of ways to study the mechanical behavior of materials. Fracture toughness is an important property that can be evaluated with a Keysight nanoindenter. Fracture toughness, represented by the symbol KIC, is the critical value of the stress-intensity factor at a crack tip necessary to produce catastrophic failure under plane-strain conditions. Lower values of KIC indicate a greater tendency toward catastrophic failure due to a pre-existing law. With the newly released Stiffness Mapping method from Keysight Technologies, evaluating fracture toughness by nanoindentation has never been easier.