Non-direct estimations of adhesive and elastic properties of materials by depth-sensing indentation

Using the connection between depth-sensing indentation by spherical indenters and mechanics of adhesive contact, a new method for non-direct determination of adhesive and elastic properties of contacting materials is proposed. At low loads, the force displacement curves reflect not only elastic properties but also adhesive properties of the contact, and therefore one can try to extract from experiments both the elastic characteristics of contacting materials (such as the reduced elastic modulus) and characteristics of molecular adhesion (such as the work of adhesion and the pull-off force) using a non-direct approach. The direct methods of estimations of the adhesive characteristics of materials currently used in experiments are rather complicated due to the instability of the experimental force displacement diagrams for ultra-low tensile forces. The proposed method is based on the use of the stable experimental data for the elastic stage of the force displacement curve and the mechanics of adhesive contact for spherical indenters. Since the experimental data always have some measurement errors, mathematical techniques for solving ill-posed problems are employed.