Validating a facile approach to measuring fracture toughness by instrumented indentation without imaging crack-lengths

Probing the fracture toughness of brittle materials by measuring the crack-length generated from indentation experiments is often practiced in many areas of materials research. However, when the cracks are too small to be measured accurately, an energy-based approach has recently been proposed by several researchers. In this letter, this approach is presented and compared with the well-known crack-length method on six different materials. We found that the energy-based method and crack-length method yield significantly different results for all materials but converge if the energy method is modified with a correction factor.

Automated summary

Measuring the crack-length generated from indentation experiments is a common method to probe the fracture toughness of brittle materials in materials research. However, when the cracks are too small to be accurately measured, an energy-based approach has been proposed as an alternative method.