Microindentation is performed on hot isostatic pressed (HIP) Mg-Al (AM40) alloy
samples produced by high-pressure die cast (HPDC) process for the purpose of
quantifying the mechanical properties of the α-Mg grains. The process
of obtaining elastic modulus and hardness from indentation load-depth curves is
well established in the literature. A new inverse method is developed to extract
plastic properties in this study. The method utilizes empirical yield
strength-hardness relationship reported in the literature together with finite
element modeling of the individual indentation. Due to the shallow depth of the
indentation, indentation size effect (ISE) is taken into account when
determining plastic properties. The stress versus strain behavior is determined
for a series of indents. The resulting average values and standard deviations
are obtained for future use as input distributions for microstructure-based
property prediction of AM40.