Hardness and Modulus of Individual Sand Particles Using Nanoindentation: Fid-Bau Portal

Hardness and Modulus of Individual Sand Particles Using Nanoindentation

Dutta, A. K. / Penumadu, D.

The complex relationship between the mechanical properties of individual particles and the global response of a granular assembly for many geotechnical engineering applications is well acknowledged. When studying the deformation behavior of sands, little experimental research exists in the past literature that reports reliable measurement techniques suitable for evaluating the properties at particle scale. A new experimental technique is presented in this study that can be used to measure deformation behavior of individual particles (crystalline silica in this study) using an instrumented indentation technique for depths of indentation in the range of 50 to 500 nanometers. In this research, two important mechanical properties, hardness and elastic modulus, of individual sand particle with diameter less than 750 microns are determined and analyzed using nanoindentation technique. Since a rigorous study of the nanoindentation technique for finite size particles has not been done to date, a detailed description of the process including techniques used and the analysis methodologies suitable for individual sand particle are described in this research along with initial results. Results on reference material with known properties (fused quartz in this study) are also presented to demonstrate the validity of the experimental procedures. Measurements such as these will have an immediate impact on discontinuous modeling techniques such as Discrete Element Method to realistically represent the deformation behavior of granular materials.