BS EN ISO 14577-4:2016 specifies a method for testing coatings which is particularly suitable for testing in the nano/micro range applicable to thin coatings. However, the application of this method of this part of ISO 14577 is not needed if the indentation depth is such a small fraction of the coating thickness that in any possible case a substrate influence can be neglected and the coating can be considered as a bulk material. Limits for such cases are given.

This test method is limited to the examination of single layers when the indentation is carried out normal to the test piece surface, but graded and multilayer coatings can also be measured in crosssection if the thickness of the individual layers or gradations is greater than the spatial resolution of the indentation process.

The test method is not limited to any particular type of material. Metallic and non-metallic coatings are included in the scope of this part of ISO 14577. In this part of ISO 14577, the term coating is used to refer to any solid layer with homogeneous properties different to that of a substrate it is connected to. The method assumes that coating properties are constant with indentation depth. Composite coatings are considered to be homogenous if the structure size is less than the indentation size.

The application of this part of ISO 14577 regarding measurement of indentation hardness is only possible if the indenter is a pyramid or a cone with a radius of tip curvature small enough for plastic deformation to occur within the coating. The hardness of visco-elastic materials or materials exhibiting significant creep will be strongly affected by the time taken to perform the test.

NOTE 1 ISO 14577-1, ISO 14577-2 and ISO 14577-3 define usage of instrumented indentation testing of bulk materials over all force and displacement ranges.

NOTE 2 The analysis used here does not make any allowances for pile-up or sink-in of indents. Use of Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) to assess the indent shape allows the determination of possible pile-up or sink-in of the surface around the indent. These surface effects result in an under-estimate (pile-up) or over-estimate (sink-in) of the contact area in the analysis and hence may influence the measured results. Pile-up generally occurs for fully work-hardened materials. Pile-up of soft, ductile materials is more likely for thinner coatings due to the constraint of the stresses in the zone of plastic deformation in the coating. It has been reported that the piled up material results in an effective increase of the contact area for the determination of hardness, while the effect is less pronounced for the determination of indentation modulus, since the piled up material behaves less rigidly.


Cross References:
ISO 14577-1:2015
ISO 14577-2:2015
ISO/IEC Guide 98-3
ISO/IEC 17025
ISO 1514
ISO 4287
ISO 2808
ISO 3270
ISO 14577-3


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