An improved analysis for viscoelastic damping in dynamic nanoindentation

The conventional analysis for stiffness and damping of the contact during nanoindentation models the indented material as a Voigt solid. With the assumption of the Voigt solid, the model can not capture instantaneous elastic recovery and the contact damping is underestimated. In this work, the material is modelled as a standard linear solid and the characteristic equations for motion of the system during dynamic nanoindentation, including the sample and instrument response, are solved to determine the stiffness and damping of the contact. These parameters are functions of the contact area and are not functions of the frequency of the imposed oscillation. The storage and loss moduli are computed and compared to results from the conventional indentation analysis.