Using work of indentation to predict erosion behavior in bulk materials and coatings

Indentation methods can be used to simulate many of the damage processes observed in the erosion testing of bulk materials and coatings. For brittle materials the transition between erosion regimes may be predicted based on simple indentation-derived models. However, the prediction of erosion rates from indentation data presents a greater challenge. In this paper the use of work of indentation to characterize the energy dissipated in damage processes is discussed and this is used to predict erosion behaviour. Reasonable agreement with experimental data is observed in some specific cases.