Microindentation behavior of the shell of the conch Strombus gigas

Abstract

Microindentation using a hard indentor is a very useful tool to probe the local mechanical properties (plastic flow, fracture, toughness, creep, etc.) of hard solids. We have used a depth sensitive indentation (DSI) version of this technique to study the shell of the conch Strombus gigas.In particular, we prepared polished sections in which the third order lamellae, the basic building block of the structure, could be indented along the three orthogonal directions; the indentation behavior along these three directions is quite different. Besides the normal information such as the hardness H from some typical dimension (typically the diameter of a pyramid-shaped indentation produced by a so-called Vickers diamond indenter) after indenting with a given load, the DSI technique also provides much additional information available from the loading and unloading curves. As can be seen from Fig. 1, the loading and unloading curves for the three orientations are quite different, as is the depth of the residual impression.