PRISMS-Indentation: Multi-scale Elasto-Plastic Virtual Indentation Module

Indentation testing has played a major role for many materials design processes as a convenient and relatively cheap experiment. However, extracting the data from indentation tests requires complex post-processing or an integrated simulation and experiment framework. Accordingly, the simulation of indentation has become a post-processing routine for indentation tests. Providing a highly efficient, computationally scalable, and open-source platform for indentation simulation provides invaluable machinery for materials design process. An open-source PRISMS-Indentation module is presented here as a multi-scale elasto-plastic virtual indentation framework. The module is implemented as a part of PRISMS-Plasticity software which covers length scales of macroscopic plasticity and crystal plasticity. The contact problem is handled using a primal–dual active set method. The framework is first tested against analytical solution of Hertzian theory for contact using an isotropic elasticity model. The robustness of the framework is then investigated in simulations of indentation of annealed Cu microstructures. Unstructured meshes with hexahedral elements and variable mesh density are used to demonstrate potential for speedup in indentation simulations.