Application of spherical macro-indentation for determination of plastic anisotropy and residual stresses using indentation geometry and inverse analysis

The simultaneous determination of mechanical properties and residual stresses using the instrumented indentation technique is more challenging when the anisotropic behaviour of a material is considered. If ignored, it may lead to inaccurate estimation of residual stresses and mechanical properties of materials. In this paper, the existence of in-plane anisotropic plasticity and the equi-biaxial residual stresses were considered in materials simultaneously. These anisotropic plastic properties and residual stresses were extracted for two materials, an aluminium alloy and a stainless steel, using an inverse analysis method and macro-spherical indentation test. The considered anisotropic materials have different yield stresses in both the longitudinal and transverse directions of the part. The inverse analysis method was based on a wide range of finite element (FE) simulations, which included a large number of models covering the properties of different steel and aluminium materials. In this method, the parameters extracted from the load-displacement (P-h) curve for indentation, along with the pile-up around the indentation area after unloading, were considered as the input parameters of the inverse analysis method. The outputs were the mechanical properties of the anisotropic material and the equi-biaxial tensile and compressive residual stresses. The proposed inverse method was based on the analysis of the artificial neural network (ANN). The effectiveness of the inverse method was examined and verified using experimental data which were found to be reliable. The method employed the P-h curve parameters and unloading morphology and was successful to determine the anisotropic plastic properties and residual stresses.