Among the three hardness types shared in the previous article, indentation hardness is the one which most engineers are familiar with. In fact, I bet that the general reply to the definition of hardness matches that of indentation hardness so much so that they are interchangeable in most discussions. Even engineering textbooks seldom mention indentation hardness as a separate topic – it is instead discussed as a hardness topic without an in-depth subtopic on other hardness types.
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| Ball indenter used for Rockwell hardness testing. Different macroindentation test methods uses different indenter geometry and measures different dimensions of the indentation geometry (image taken from Instron). |
Indentation hardness quantifies the resistance of a sample to material deformation, plastic deformation to be specific, due to the effect of a constant compressive load of a sharp object, hence the term “indentation”. In this test, a specific indenter is exerted onto the test material until an indentation is formed, of which dimension is measured and determines the hardness in accordance to a certain scale.
For engineers personally involved in testing materials, it would be important to understand that most indentation tests have specific load rate and specific dwell time (the period in which the indenter load is held without moving), but not all of them are so.
