Nano-indentation instrumented tests are carried out at shallow depths on PAN-based and MPP-based carbon fibres. Indentation moduli are obtained by performing the tests at ten different measured ...orientations with respect to the fibre axis. They are used to identify the elastic constants of the fibres, assuming a transversely isotropic behaviour, by minimising a cost function between measured and estimated values. Inconstancies between the identified in-plane shear and transverse moduli and reported literature values are pointed out, and some drawbacks of the nano-indentation method are highlighted. An improved method taking into account the buckling mechanisms of crystallites at stake during the indentation process, and visible in the hysteretic behaviour of force-penetration nanoindentation curves, is proposed. It allows to identify values of elastic constants that are in accordance with literature values. These elastic properties of carbon fibres are in turn used to estimate the elastic properties of epoxy matrix composites containing these fibres. Very good agreement is found with experimentally available values of unidirectional ply properties. An excellent correlation between experiments and Finite Element Analyses of the indentation response of carbon fibres is eventually found.
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In the field of medical applications, precise localization of medical instruments and bone structures is crucial to ensure computer-assisted surgical interventions. In orthopedic surgery, existing ...devices typically rely on stereoscopic vision. Their purpose is to aid the surgeon in screw fixation of prostheses or bone removal. This article addresses the challenge of localizing a rigid object consisting of randomly arranged planar markers using a single camera. This approach is especially vital in medical situations where accurate object alignment relative to a camera is necessary at distances ranging from 80 cm to 120 cm. In addition, the size limitation of a few tens of centimeters ensures that the resulting locator does not obstruct the work area. This rigid locator consists of a solid at the surface of which a set of plane markers (ArUco) are glued. These plane markers are randomly distributed over the surface in order to systematically have a minimum of two visible markers whatever the orientation of the locator. The calibration of the locator involves finding the relative positions between the individual planar elements and is based on a bundle adjustment approach. One of the main and known difficulties associated with planar markers is the problem of pose ambiguity. To solve this problem, our method lies in the formulation of an efficient initial solution for the optimization step. After the calibration step, the reached positioning uncertainties of the locator are better than two-tenth of a cubic millimeter and one-tenth of a degree, regardless of the orientation of the locator in space. To assess the proposed method, the locator is rigidly attached to a stylus of about twenty centimeters length. Thanks to this approach, the tip of this stylus seen by a 16.1 megapixel camera at a distance of about 1 m is localized in real time in a cube lower than 1 mm side. A surface registration application is proposed by using the stylus on an artificial scapula.
The mechanical response of amorphous silica (or silica glass) under hydrostatic compression for very high pressures up to 25GPa is modelled via an elastic–plastic constitutive equation (continuum ...mechanics framework). The material parameters appearing in the theory have been estimated from the ex situ experimental data of Rouxel et al. Rouxel T, Ji H, Guin JP, Augereau F, Rufflé B. J Appl Phys 2010;107(9):094903. The model is shown to capture the major features of the pressure–volume response changes from the in situ experimental work of Sato and Funamori Sato T, Funamori N. Phys Rev Lett 2008;101:255502 and Wakabayashi et al. Wakabayashi D, Funamori N, Sato T, Taniguchi T. Phys Rev B 2011;84(14):144103. In particular, the saturation of densification, the increase in elasticity parameters (bulk, shear and Young’s moduli) and Poisson’s ratio are found to be key parameters of the model.
In glass or carbon fibres reinforced plastics, creep or stress relaxation, arise from the polymeric nature of the matrix. Plant fibres, used in bio-composites, are also polymers. Therefore, the issue ...of their service life requires studying the viscoelastic behaviour of both the matrix and the fibres. In this study, we investigate, at different length scales, the response of elementary flax fibres to tensile tests, as well as to nano-indentation tests on their secondary cell walls. The results of these experiments are then analysed via linear viscoelastic rheological models and identification procedures. The values of the identified parameters (relaxation time, viscosity and elastic stiffness) are discussed in relation to the microstructure of the flax fibre (cellulose microfibrils, hemicelluloses and pectins). The nano-indentation technique provides much more deterministic results than tension tests on an entire fibre. The scale of the secondary wall cell is then relevant to assess the viscoelastic behaviour of the fibres.
We report on the difficulties of extracting plastic parameters from constitutive equations derived by instrumented indentation tests on hard and stiff materials at shallow depths of penetration. As a ...general rule, we refer here to materials with an elastic stiffness more than 10 % of that of the indenter
and
a yield strain higher than 1 %, as well as to penetration depths less than ∼ 5 times the characteristic tip defect length of the indenter. We experimentally tested such a material (an amorphous alloy) by nanoindentation. To describe the mechanical response of the test, namely the force-displacement curve, it is necessary to consider the combined effects of indenter tip imperfections and indenter deformability. For this purpose, an identification procedure has been carried out by performing numerical simulations (using Finite Element Analysis) with constitutive equations that are known to satisfactorily describe the behaviour of the tested material. We propose a straightforward procedure to address indenter tip imperfection and deformability, which consists of firstly taking account of a deformable indenter in the numerical simulations. This procedure also involves modifying the experimental curve by considering a truncated length to create artificially the material’s response to a perfectly sharp indentation. The truncated length is determined directly from the loading part of the force-displacement curve. We also show that ignoring one or both of these issues results in large errors in the plastic parameters extracted from the data.
The determination of the contact area is a key step in deriving mechanical properties such as hardness or an elastic modulus by instrumented indentation testing. Two families of procedures are ...dedicated to extracting this area: on the one hand, post-mortem measurements that require residual imprint imaging, and on the other hand, direct methods that only rely on the load vs. penetration depth curve. With the development of built-in scanning probe microscopy imaging capabilities such as atomic force microscopy and indentation tip scanning probe microscopy, last-generation indentation devices have made systematic residual imprint imaging much faster and more reliable. In this paper, a new post-mortem method is introduced and further compared to three existing classical direct methods by means of a numerical and experimental benchmark covering a large range of materials. It is shown that the new method systematically leads to lower error levels regardless of the type of material. The pros and cons of the new method vs. direct methods are also discussed, demonstrating its efficiency in easily extracting mechanical properties with enhanced confidence.
Shear band initiation, development and mutual interaction are studied in a Zr55Cu30Al10Ni5 metallic glass by means of an innovative experimental technique associating diametral compression test (or ...Brazilian test), scanning electron microscopy and digital image correlation analysis. The intense strain occurring in shear bands and the deformation map of their overall pattern are both estimated with a high resolution (∼5μm/pixel), offering a better understanding of the phenomenon. Finite element simulations based on a new and original plasticity model, the compartmentalized model, makes it possible to reproduce the shear band development observed experimentally, as well as the interlocking mechanism occurring between the shear bands.
Vibration energy harvesters (VEHs) allow the extraction of ambient mechanical energy. The proposed analysis focuses on bistable harvesters with Duffing nonlinearity. Bistable harvesters exhibit ...larger frequency bandwidth than linear monostable harvesters, but they exhibit complex behaviors (i.e., multiple periodic orbits and chaos), making their evaluation challenging. To assess the quality of a VEH, it is necessary to evaluate its energy performance generically. In this paper, we offer a new quantitative metric that can be used to evaluate bistable harvesters while taking into account the richness and diversity of their dynamics. This metric – called power expectation – is based on the average harvested power of each existing orbit weighted by its occurrence probability. The value of this power expectation depends on the harvester characteristics and potential orbit jump strategy implemented. Finally, we define a new figure of merit (FoM) based on the integral of the power expectation over all vibration frequencies. This FoM can be used for a generic evaluation of nonlinear vibration energy harvesters (NVEHs), by taking into account the various orbits and their respective probability of occurrence depending on the orbit jump strategy used. The proposed FoM also makes it possible to ensure a fair comparison with linear VEHs and quantitatively assess the effectiveness of orbit jump strategies for a given VEH.
The region of permanent densification beneath a Berkovich indentation imprint in silica glass is investigated using a novel chemical dissolution technique. The use of the similitude regime in sharp ...indentation testing allows one to record reliable data with a good spatial resolution that makes it possible to deal with low loads (typically below 10 mN) and, more importantly, crack-free imprints. The densified zone dissolves more quickly than the non densified regions. The analysis of the results, along the vertical axis, indicates that the densification zone is rather homogeneous with a steep transition to the non densified zone. The size of the densification zone, with respect to the initial free surface, is estimated to be around two times the maximum penetration depth of the instrumented indentation test. These findings are compared with those obtained by numerical simulations using different constitutive equations from the literature. A very good concordance between Raman spectroscopy and chemical probe results is found for imprints made with no or few cracking events during indentation testing.
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