Experimental and numerical study of ball indentation for evaluation of mechanical properties and fracture toughness of structural steel

Determination of mechanical properties of materials using non-conventional techniques has been an active area of research for a long time. Among various small specimen techniques to determine mechanical properties of materials, the ball indentation technique (BIT) has proved to be advantageous. BIT is used to measure material’s mechanical properties including fracture toughness when a tensile test cannot be performed: on welded joints or critical locations of components under service. The present work highlights the applicability of BIT for evaluating flow behaviour of engineering structural steels En24. Standard mechanical properties like ultimate tensile strength, yield stress, strain hardening coefficient evaluated for steels with varying microstructures generated through heat treatment. To determine fracture toughness from the flow behaviour, non linear damage models have been utilized. Using this model, fracture toughness of the En24 steel at different heat treated conditions has been computed using the results generated by the BIT. These results are verified with the already established correlation in literature. Numerical validation of the results generated by the BIT has been carried out by Finite Element Modelling (FEM) using standard ABAQUS software package. The FE model of the BI simulation helps to compute sub indenter stress-strain fields which determine the extent of pile-up in highly ductile materials.