Obtaining shear relaxation modulus and creep compliance of linear viscoelastic materials from instrumented indentation using axisymmetric indenters of power-law profiles

Abstract

Using Laplace transform, we solve the inverse problem of obtaining the shear relaxation modulus and creep compliance of linear viscoelastic solids from indentation by axisymmetric indenters of power-law profiles. We identify several simple, though nontrivial, loading paths for carrying out indentation measurements such that the inverse problem has analytical solutions. We show that the shear relaxation modulus and creep compliance may be readily obtained using the newly derived analytical expressions together with proposed indentation loading paths.