Finite element analysis on the mechanical properties of the film/substrate system in the process of nanoindentation

The finite-element code ABAQUS/Standard was applied to establish the finite element model of nanoindentation and the film/substrate system was simulated. The numerical simulation results indicate that the residual depth after unloading become shallow as the film thickness increasing, while the indentation depths are the same. The influence of substrate become small as the film thickness increasing. For the film with the same thickness, the residual depth and the internal stress of substrate increase with the increase of the maximum indentation depth. At last, the finite-element method (FEM) is applied to simulate the effect of different Young's modulus on the nanoindentation, and the FEM results are compared with the experiment data.