Abstract

Today, glass is being used for a host of structural applications. Such applications demand stress endurance. The endurance could be severely compromised due to pre-existing flaws. Such flaws occur during preparation and subsequent surface preparation. Here, we report the utilization of the novel nanoindentation technique to simulate how the local mechanical properties in a glass, e.g., soda lime-silica glass (SLSG) are affected due to the presence of flaws. Thus, first the Vickers macroindentations are performed at three different loads of 2.9 N, 4.9 N, and 9.81 N on the mirror-polished surfaces of the commercially available (SLSG) slides. Then, the variations in the magnitudes of nanohardness (H) and Young’s modulus (E) are studied using nanoindentation experiments around the bigger static macroindents. The results showed that the maximum degradations in both (H) and (E) occur in the most compliant zones. The results also confirmed that these compliant zones are situated near the static macroindentation cavities. Further, such compliant zones are also noted to occur at the surfaces around the microcracked regions surrounding the macroindentation cavities.

Rudra Banerjee

Assistant Professor, Computational Condensed Matter

My research interests include Computational Physics, disordered materials and thermodynamics.