One of the most promising techniques that emerged from the implementation of nanotechnology in materials science and engineering to assess mechanical properties at small scales is nanoindentation. The idea is simple: by pushing a needle onto the surface of a material, the surface deforms in a way that reflects the mechanical properties of the indented material. Yet, in contrast to most metals and ceramics, for which this technique was originally developed, concrete materials are highly heterogeneous and multi-phase materials from a scale of a few nanometers to macroscopic scales. This brought about statistical nanoindentation techniques developed at MIT: by carrying out a large array of nanoindentation tests on a surface of a multi-phase material, mechanically active phases are identified by statistical means. Follow us at: [ Ссылка ]
