Nanoindentation simulation on single crystal copper by quasi-continuum method
A. B. Zhu, D. Y. He, R. J. He and C. Zou
Materials Science and Engineering A, 674, 76-81 (2016).

ABSTRACT
Considering that nanoindentation size effect under very small nano scale could
not be effectively investigated by traditional experimental methods, this paper
proposed to use quasi-continuum (QC) method to establish a multi-scale
simulation model for nanoindentation process on single crystal copper at very
small depth, below 20 angstrom. And different-size small indenters were adopted
in this paper with their radiuses ranging from 2 nm to 10 nm. The simulation
results showed that the contact stiffness did not show indentation size effect,
but the values fluctuated on a horizontal line; that the nano-hardness showed
obvious indentation size effect.