• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
• /
• v.13 no.5
• /
• pp.164-172
• /
• 1996

In hard and brittle materials as advanced ceramics indented by a hard indenter, the indenter's transition radius, was defined as critical radius which distinguishes the occurrence of the first plastic deformation from the elastic cracking as the first damaging event, is analytically and experimentally investigated. The analytical result is shown that the critical load, which not enlarge pre-existing cracks as the form of median crack beneath a indenter, is constant, and is determined by the order of $k_{IC}$$^{4}$ $P_{Y}$$^{3}$(where, $K_{IC}$ , $P_{Y}$are the fracture toughness of materials and the applied pressure by indenting, respectively). And the size of transiton radii were experimentally obtained with the similar values to the analytical results.lts..