ABSTRACT
The contact stiffness (S) or (compliance) can be measured during the loading portion of the nanoindentation test using the CSM technique described by
Li & Bhushan (2002). This is done by imposing a harmonic forcewhich is added to the nominally increasing load, P, on the indenter as shown in Figure 6. The displacement response of the indenter at the excitation frequency and the phase angle between the indenter load and the specimen response are measured continuously as a function of depth. Solving for the in-phase and out-of phase portions of the response yields an explicit determination of contact stiffness, S, as a function of the indentation depth.
