| The residual stresses/penetration as well as yielding behaviors of a soft elastic-plastic coating on hard substrate under the normal indentation of a rigid sphere are examined using finite element analysis. The effect of different parameters such as coating thickness and the coating/substrate elastic moduli ratio are studied on the yielding inception, residual penetration and unloading behavior of the indented coating.;Using commercial software ABAQUS 6.14, the indentation problem is modeled as a rigid sphere indenting half space deformable body. Upon verification of the model with various published configurations, a parametric study is carried out for different conditions including various loadings, coating thicknesses and different elastic-plastic material properties which includes specifically the ratio of Young's modulus of the coating to that of the substrate also the ratio of the coating's yield strength to that of the substrate, to cover a wide range of engineering materials. The effect of different parameters on the residual penetration/stresses and yielding behaviors are studied in order to obtain a full understanding of elasto-plastic indentation of soft coatings which has significant applications in tribology, biomedical transplants and solar cells among others. The results of this study, for example, is the first step to identify important parameters affecting the sand abrasion and impact phenomena on the exposed glass surface of photovoltaics cells covered with polymeric transparent coatings. |
