TSINGHUA SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

ISSN  1007-0214  63/67  pp393-399

Volume 13, Number S1, October 2008

Comparative Study of Reverse Algorithms via Artificial Neural

Networks Based on Simulated Indentation Tests*

Somsak Swaddiwudhipong**, Edy Harsono,

Liu Zishun†

Department of Civil Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 119260;

† Institute of High Performance Computing, Singapore 138632

Abstract: The advances in the instrumented indentation equipments and the need to assess the properties
of materials of small volume such as those constitute the micro-electro-mechanical devices, micro-electronic
packages, and thin films have propelled the interest in material characterization via indentation tests. The
load-displacement curves and their characteristics, namely, the curvature of the loading path, C, and the ra-
tio of the remaining and total work done, WR / WT, can be conveniently obtained from finite element simula-
tions for various elasto-plastic material properties. The paper reports the comparative study on two reverse
neural networks algorithms involving several combinations of databases established from the results ob-
tained from simulated indentation tests. The performance of each set of results is analyzed and the most
appropriate algorithm identified and reported. The approach with the selected neural networks model has
great potential in practical applications on the characterization of a small volume of materials.

Key words: artificial neural networks; finite element simulation; friction; least square support vector
machines; material characterization; indentation tests

as Young’s modulus, E, yield strength, Y, and strain

Introduction
The urgent needs for material characterization on small
volumes, such as thin films, have motivated the re-
search works in this area of study. Traditional testing
methods are not suitable because a “bulk” quantity of
the materials may not be available and the mechanical
properties of materials at small scale are usually differ-
ent from those of bulk materials. It is not only the
hardness of the indented material[1] that is of interest to
material scientists. Indentation tests can also be used to
calculate other mechanical properties of materials such
Received: 2008-05-30
* Supported by the Singapore Ministry of Education’s ACRF Tier 1
Funds (No. R-264-000-186-112)
** To whom correspondence should be addressed.
E-mail: cvesomsa@nus.edu.sg; Tel: 65-65162173
hardening exponent, n. Methods and algorithms to ex-
tract these mechanical properties from indentation
curves of elasto-plastic material obeying power law
strain hardening have been one of the main focus re-
search interest on instrumented indentation. The ex-
traction of elasto-plastic material properties (E, Y, n)
from the indentation curves has been considered by
many researchers[2-8]. Dimensional analysis has been
used to propose the universal functions which relate
characteristics of indentation curves and parameters of
material properties[9,10]. By adopting these functions,
forward and reverse analyses have been proposed to
extract material properties from indentation curves.
Closed form solutions for indentation curve are not
readily available due to the complexity of contact
problem as well as highly nonlinearity of materials in-
volved in indentation tests. Artificial neural network
 394 Tsinghua Science and Technology, October 2008, 13(S1): 393-399

(ANN) and support vector machine (SVM) are gaining Rigid cone
popularity in the field of engineering as their capa- indenter

bilities to mimic the method of computation adopted 50°, 60°, 70.3°

Indented
by human brain. They do not require complicated O
material C
mathematical model as required in conventional meth-
ods. Neural network models have been widely applied
to solve any reverse analyses involving complicated
functions as those of indentation tests. These models
have been used to characterize the mechanical proper-
ties of materials from indentation curves by several 
researchers[11-15].
A B
Comparative study on application of neural network
models in material characterization using simulated Fig. 1 Finite element mesh for conical indentation
dual indentation tests has been carried out in the pre-
sent study. Simulated indentation tests encompassing
most of metallic material properties were conducted
via extensive 2D finite element analysis. The predicted
elasto-plastic material properties obtained from the
neural network models are in good agreement with the
expected prescribed values.

1 Finite Element Analysis

Finite element simulations of indentation tests have
been carried out for 640 different combinations of Fig. 2 A typical load-displacement of sharp indentation
elasto-plastic properties for three different conical in- curve
denter tips of 50°, 60°, and 70.3°. The conical indenter
is modelled as a rigid body while the target material is
treated as a deformable body using more than 10 000 2 Characteristics of Indentation
axisymmetric quadrilateral elements in each model. A Curves
finer mesh is adopted near the contact region and the
mesh is gradually coarser further away from the con- The reverse analysis based on results from just one in-
denter is not sufficient to provide a unique set of solu-
tact region. The convergence of the mesh is verified
tions for E*/Y and n and the P/h curves from at least
through extensive convergence studies and the mesh
dual indenters of different geometries are required[8,16].
used in the analysis is also tested to ensure that the re- From dimensional analysis[9,10], it can be shown that
sults are insensitive to far-field effect. For ease of ref- the relationships between load-displacement parame-
erence, conical indenters with half-angles of 50°, 60°, ters and the elasto-plastic material properties are given
and 70.3° are designated as C50, C60, and C70, respec- by
tively. A typical finite element model is illustrated in C § E* ·
Fig. 1. 31,T ¨ ,n¸ (1)
YT © Y ¹
In this study, the response of a wide practical range
of elasto-plastic materials obeying power law strain- WR § E* ·
3 2,T ¨ ,n¸ (2)
hardening under different conical indenter tips has WT T © Y ¹
been simulated. Figure 2 shows a typical load-
§ E* ·
displacement curve obtained from indentation    31,T 1 ¨ ,n¸
CT 1 © Y ¹ 3 § E* ·
simulation. 3,T 12 ¨ ,n¸ (3)
CT 2 § E* · © Y ¹
31,T 2 ¨ ,n¸
© Y ¹
 Somsak Swaddiwudhipong et alġComparative Study of Reverse Algorithms via Artificial Neural ... 395

where T indicates the type and geometry of the in-
denters considered, C is the curvature of the loading
curve, WT and WU are the areas under the loading and
unloading curves. Indentation parameters adopted for
dual indenters are indentified for each of the indenter
tips denoted by the subscript 1 and 2.
Extensive finite simulations covering the values of
E*/Y from 10 to 1500 and n from 0.025 to 0.6 have
been carried out. The surfaces denoted by the functions
31 and 3 2 shown in Figs. 3-5 illustrate the varia-
tions of C/Y and WR/WT with respect to E*/Y and n for
different indenter tips. The second subscript indicates
the angle of indenter tip used.
The surfaces describing the ratio of C/Y for different
combinations of two indenter tips are presented in
Figs. 6-8.

(a) (b)
Fig. 3 Variation of (a) C/Y (ɉ15) and (b) WR /WT (ɉ25) based on conical indenter of 50°

(a)       (b)
Fig. 4
 Variation of (a) C/Y (ɉ16) and (b) WR /WT (ɉ26) based on conical indenter of 60°

(a) (b)
Fig. 5 Variation of (a) C/Y (ɉ17) and (b) WR /WT (ɉ27) based on conical indenter of 70.3°
 396
Fig. 6 Variation of C50 /C60 (ɉ3,65)
Fig. 7 Variation of C70 /C60 (ɉ3,76)
Fig. 8 Variation of C70 /C50 (ɉ3,75)
3 Construction of Neural Network
Models
In the present study, artificial neural network (ANN)
and support vector machine (SVM) models have been
established to carry out mapping of the characteristics of
Tsinghua Science and Technology, October 2008, 13(S1): 393-399
the indentation curves back to the material properties.
Neural network can be established without knowing
how the output functionally depends on the input. The
surfaces described by functions, 3 1 , 3 2 , and 3 3 as
shown in Figs. 3-8 are used to serve as the training and
validating data sets for ANN and SVM models. More
details on the establishment of neural network models
are given in Refs. [14] and [15].
Two reverse analysis algorithms based on ANN and
SVM models have been constructed to allow recovery
of elasto-plastic material properties from indentation
curves. Flowcharts illustrating the ANN and the SVMs
models are shown in Figs. 9 and 10.
Fig. 9 Flowchart for ANN
Fig. 10 Flowchart for SVMs
4 Numerical Results
Simulated indentation tests based on four material
properties reported in earlier study[8] were conducted
for different conical indenter tip angles. The quantities
C/Y and WR /WT have been identified from indentation
curves and their values depicted in Table 1.
Indentation parameters obtained from four material
properties are fed into the tuned neural network and sup-
port vector machine models. The material properties
predicted by the proposed reverse analysis models are
shown in Tables 2 and 3 for ANN and SVMs.
 Somsak Swaddiwudhipong et alġComparative Study of Reverse Algorithms via Artificial Neural ... 397

Table 1 Indentation parameters obtained from forward analyses

Material properties Indentation parameters from forward analyses
Materials C50 C60 C70
E* / GPa Y / MPa n
C/Y WR /WT C/Y WR /WT C/Y WR /WT
AL6061 70.2 284 0.080 21.22 0.958 44.27 0.939 101.40 0.906
AL7075 73.4 500 0.122 21.78 0.926 41.65 0.896 91.53 0.848
Steel 194.3 500 0.100 25.10 0.969 50.65 0.956 117.62 0.933
Iron 170.8 300 0.250 44.36 0.960 84.03 0.945 185.17 0.922

Table 2 Comparison identified material properties obtained from ANN algorithm

Identified elastic-plastic material properties for ANN algorithm

*
Materials E Y n
(% Error) (% Error) (% Error)
C50-C60 C60-C70 C50-C70 C50-C60 C60-C70 C50-C70 C50-C60 C60-C70 C50-C70
AL6061 70.16 70.21 70.37 283.8 284.0 284.0 0.0791 0.0799 0.0790
(0.06) (0.01) (0.24) (0.07) (0.00) (0.00) (1.13) (0.13) (1.25)
AL7075 74.42 73.54 73.04 500.3 499.5 500.7 0.1292 0.1227 0.1270
(1.39) (0.19) (0.49) (0.06) (0.10) (0.14) (5.90) (0.57) (4.10)
Steel 201.32 194.74 197.45 499.4 499.4 499.4 0.1034 0.0999 0.1039
(3.61) (0.23) (1.62) (0.12) (0.12) (0.12) (3.40) (0.10) (3.90)
Iron 172.35 171.28 171.67 300.0 300.4 299.7 0.2525 0.2498 0.2506
(0.91) (0.28) (0.51) (0.00) (0.13) (0.10) (1.00) (0.08) (0.24)

Table 3 Comparison identified material properties obtained from SVM algorithm

Identified elastic-plastic material properties for SVM algorithm
*
E Y n
Materials
(% Error) (% Error) (% Error)
C50-C60 C60-C70 C50-C70 C50-C60 C60-C70 C50-C70 C50-C60 C60-C70 C50-C70
68.01 70.03 70.52 265.7 284.0 283.9 0.0801 0.0812 0.0791
AL6061
(3.12) (0.24) (0.46) (6.44) (0.00) (0.04) (0.13) (1.50) (1.13)
76.84 73.65 73.97 499.5 499.5 500.1 0.1279 0.1217 0.1292
AL7075
(4.69) (0.34) (0.78) (0.10) (0.10) (0.02) (4.84) (0.25) (5.90)
193.62 195.11 203.26 499.5 499.5 499.6 0.1046 0.0991 0.1048
Steel
(0.35) (0.42) (4.61) (0.10) (0.10) (0.08) (4.60) (0.90) (4.80)
173.53 170.79 172.84 300.3 300.3 299.9 0.2512 0.2503 0.2512
Iron
(1.60) (0.01) (1.19) (0.10) (0.10) (-0.03) (0.48) (0.12) (0.48)

It can be observed that the proposed reverse analysis
algorithms based on database of several combinations
of conical indenter tips predict the elasto-plastic mate-
rial properties accurately. The predicted material prop-
erties based on ANN are marginally better than those
of SVMs. However, the SVMs are more structured and
less computational effort is required when compared to
ANN.
The best predicted material properties are obtained
from reverse analysis algorithms derived based on
datasets of conical indenter tips of 60° and 70.3°. The
tuned neural network models created from datasets of
sharper indenter tip of 50° with either of 60° or 70.3°
half-angle, produce results with somewhat more 
deviations than the former combination especially for
the values of n. Simulated indentation tests carried out
by using the sharpest indenter tip (50°) introduce more
friction affecting the indentation curves. It is observed
that it is harder to achieve smooth indentation curves
for the sharpest indenter tip of 50° in this study. Ele-
ments near the contact region also suffer greater distor-
tion for the same indentation depth. Indentation pa-
rameters obtained from the sharpest indenter tip are
usually less accurate than those of 60° and 70.3°.
 398 Tsinghua Science and Technology, October 2008, 13(S1): 393-399

5 Sensitivity Study respectively. The sensitivity of all combinations of

The sensitivity of the predicted elasto-plastic material
properties to the perturbations of the input variables
has been investigated in detail. Based on the Monte
Carlo method, all inputs for three combinations conical
indenter tip datasets are perturbed simultaneously. The
perturbation values of 1%, 1%, 0.5%, and 0.5% are
adopted for CT 1 / Y , CT 2 / Y , WR / WT T 1 , and WR / WTT 2 ,
datasets has been carried out. Only combination of
datasets from conical indenter tips of 60° and 70.3° for
each algorithm is reported herein. Figures 11-13 show
the sensitivity of the proposed reverse analysis algo-
rithms for material characterization via instrumented
indentation tests. It can be observed that E* is more
sensitive to the perturbation of the characteristic values
of indentation curves while the value of Y and n are

(a) SVMs (b) ANN algorithm

*
Fig. 11 Sensitivity of E for the proposed neural networks

(a) SVMs (b) ANN algorithm

Fig. 12 Sensitivity of Y for the proposed neural networks

(a) SVMs                    (b) ANN algorithm

Fig. 13 Sensitivity of n for the proposed neural networks
 Somsak Swaddiwudhipong et alġComparative Study of Reverse Algorithms via Artificial Neural …
better behaved. For both algorithms, the largest devia-
tions of the values of E* occur in the region of high
values of E*/Y and n close to 0, implying materials
with a short elastic regime and very flat plastic behav-
ior, which are less common practically. Material prop-
erties obtained from ANN algorithm are more sensitive
to the perturbation compared to those from SVMs.
6 Conclusions
Neural network models based on dual indenters con-
cept are constructed for material characterization via
instrumented indentation tests. From the present com-
parative study, it can be concluded that the prediction
of elasto-plastic material properties is more accurate if
combination of datasets of conical indenter tips of 60°
and 70.3°, where elements near these indenter tips are
less distorted and less friction involved, are adopted.
The results obtained from ANN model are more accu-
rate compared to those from SVMs. However, SVMs
require less computationally efforts to calibrate the
network as compared to ANN models. Generally
speaking, these two proposed algorithms are able to
predict the mechanical properties of materials rather
accurately. The proposed neural network models can
be extended to other applications in engineering and
natural systems.
References
[1] Tabor D. The Hardness of Metals. Oxford, USA: Clarendon
Press, 1951.
[2] Doerner M F, Nix W D. A method for interpreting the data
from depth-sensing indentation instruments. Journal of Ma-
terials Research, 1986, 1: 601-609.
[3] Oliver W C, Pharr G M. An improved technique for deter-
mining hardness and elastic modulus using load and dis-
placement sensing indentation experiments. Journal of Ma-
terials Research, 1992, 7: 1564-1583.
[4] Giannakopoulos A E, Suresh S. Determination of elasto-
plastic properties by instrumented sharp indentation.
Scripta Materialia, 1999, 40(10): 1191-1198.
[5] Dao M, Chollacoop N, Van Vliet K J, et al. Computational
399
modeling of the forward and reverse problems in instru-
mented sharp indentation. Acta Materialia, 2001, 49(19):
3899-3918.
[6] Xu Z H, Rowcliffe D. Method to determine the plastic
properties of bulk materials by nanoindentation. Philoso-
phical Magazine A, 2002, 82: 1893-1901.
[7] Chollacoop N, Dao M, Suresh S. Depth-sensing instru-
mented indentation with dual indenters. Acta Materialia,
2003, 51: 3713-3729.
[8] Swaddiwudhipong S, Tho K K, Liu Z S, et al. Material
characterization based on dual indenters. International
Journal of Solids and Structures, 2005, 42(1): 69-83.
[9] Cheng Y T, Cheng C M. Scaling approach to conical inden-
tation in elastic-plastic solids with work hardening. Journal
of Applied Physics, 1998, 84(3): 1284-1291.
[10] Cheng Y T, Cheng C M. Scaling relationships in conical in-
dentation of elastic-perfectly plastic solids. International
Journal of Solids and Structures, 1999, 36(8): 1231-1243.
[11] Huber N, Tsagrakis I, Tsakmakis C. Determination of con-
stitutive properties of think metallic films on substrates by
spherical indentation using neural networks. International
Journal of Solids and Structures, 2000, 37: 6499-6516.
[12] Muliana A, Steward R, Haj-Ali R M, et al. Artificial neural
network and finite element modeling of nanoindentation
tests. Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A (Physical
Metallurgy and Materials Science), 2002, 33A(7): 1939-
1947.
[13] Tho K K, Swaddiwudhipong S, Liu Z S, et al. Artificial
neural network model for material characterization by in-
dentation. Modelling and Simulation in Materials Science
and Engineering, 2004, 12(5): 1055-1062.
[14] Swaddiwudhipong S, Hua J, Harsono E, et al. Improved al-
gorithm for material characterization by simulated indenta-
tion tests. Modelling and Simulation in Materials Science
and Engineering, 2006, 14(8): 1347-1362.
[15] Swaddiwudhipong S, Harsono E, Hua J, et al. Reverse
analysis via efficient artificial neural networks based on
simulated berkovich indentation considering effects of fric-
tion. Engineering with Computers, 2008, 24: 127-134.
[16] Tho K K, Swaddiwudhipong S, Liu Z S, et al. Uniqueness
of reverse analysis from conical indentation tests. Journal
of Materials Research, 2004, 19(8): 2498-2502.