Vickers Hardness (Micro and Macro)
5 Vickers hardness tests performed on a polished sample. Note the pyramidal shape of the hardness tests.
Micro-Vickers hardness testing allows the user to test very local material properties enabling tracking of changes in the hardness of a material as a function of distance. In the graph above there are three distinct hardness zones. The black dots are the micro-Vickers hardness readings while the dashed grey lines represent the 95 % confidence interval for the mean hardness in the three hardness zones.
How Does It Work?
A right pyramid diamond indenter is brought into contact with the material and loaded to a pre-determined load (between 0.01 and 2 kg for microhardness and between 1 and 50 kg for macro-hardness) for a predetermined period of time (usually 10-20 seconds but the time can vary for highly elastic materials). The indenter is then removed and the size of the indentation is determined by measuring the distance between opposing corners of the pyramid. The size of the indentation and the load are then used to calculate the Vickers hardness (HV) of the material at that location.
Advantages
Disadvantages
When should it be used?
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