Application of a portable indentation rig with Rockwell indenter to determine mechanical properties and residual stresses on an aluminum plate

Measuring residual stresses is still a dilemma in many engineering applications. It is even more crucial when the industrial requirements demand for a non-destructive technique in order to avoid compromising the structural integrity of the engineering components. Furthermore, estimating the mechanical properties of the materials, especially when the components are aged, is of importance. Instrumented indentation has gained much interest in recent years. There are many studies in the literature which are focused on measuring residual stresses or mechanical properties using instrumented indentation. Since in many cases there is no possibility of transferring large samples or those under service, for possible measurements, having a portable rig can be very useful. Furthermore, indentation procedure is a low-cost non-destructive method with high accuracy which is able to measure the plastic properties of material as well as its residual stresses on which the designing and construction of the portable apparatus were based. The instrumented indentation testing details were followed according to the ASTM E2546-15 standard practice. In this research, a wide range of simulations were performed on a group of aluminum alloys in order to estimate the equi-biaxial residual stresses by analyzing the indentation load–displacement curves which were obtained from the experimental outcomes. Then neural networks were employed to estimate the unknown parameters. The performance accuracy of the designed portable apparatus and the acceptable precision of the introduced method were then verified with experimental tests performed on Al 2024-T351.