3. Heterogeneous materials

3.1 Critical penetration and Vickers indentation pressure of a bilayer material

We consider a bilayer, namely a material, called substrate and of plastic flow stress σ _0s , coated with a film of uniform thickness e and flow stress σ _0e . Each of the materials is assumed to be homogeneous and RPP, their Vickers hardness, which we note for simplicity H _s and H _e , is of the order of 3 times their flow stress ...