Vickers Microhardness Testing with Miniaturized Disk Specimens

The microhardness technique has been increasingly important for testing irradiated materials because of the necessity of small-scale specimen technology. In order to establish Vickers microhardness testing over a wide temperature range using miniaturized specimens such as transmission electron microscopy (TEM) disks, an apparatus that permits the measurements in the temperature range of well below liquid nitrogen temperature to well above room temperature is developed. Effects of indentation size, disk-specimen thickness, specimen setting and test temperature on the Vickers microhardness data of an unirradiated iron alloy are described