Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia
Abstract
After high-load spherical indentation treatment, the variations of hardness on the plastic zone of Ti-6Al-4V were investigated via nanoindentation method. The hardness within the center of plastic zone was measured by nanoindenter, and the magnitude decreased gradually along the depth, which were caused by the different extent of plastic deformation under the residual imprint. The microstructure of indentation were observed using scanning electron microscope (SEM) before and after surface etching, and the results showed that the microhardness revealed the average hardness of α and β phases of Ti-6Al-4V. The maximum hardness reached 6.438 GPa in the depth of 132 μm. In addition, the two and three dimensional contour profiles of residual imprint introduced by high-load spherical indentation were measured by the white-light interferometer and the shape of residual imprint was obtained. All results were discussed in detail
