Brinell Hardness Test On Engineering Materials

Hardness of engineering materials is frequently used in classical mechanics and other engineering calculations. These hardess values of different materials are obtained by different hardness testing methods. One of them is called as Brinell Hardness Test. In this article, the application principle of Brinell Hardness test and it’s governing equation is explained.

What Is Brinell Hardness Test?

The applicatin of Brinell Hardness test is very basic. There is a indenter that generally has 10 mm of diameter and steel or cemented carbide. This indenter is forced on the surface of the specimen as shown above. This load is divided to the indentation area to obtain Brinell Hardess Number.

Standard loads are used as; 500, 1500 and 3000 kilograms. The use of these loads are defined according to the hardness of the materials. The material of indenter also selected from steel or cemented carbide. If the workpiece is very hard, cemented carbide indenters are used. If the steel one used in Brinell Tests for very hard metals, there could be a plastic deformation on indenter that will lead to inaccuracies in Brinell Test.

Also Hardness Brinell(HB) is defined with an equation;

HB = Hardness Brinell of material

F = Indentation load(N)(lb)

Db = Diameter of indenter(mm)(in)

Di = Diameter of the indention on surface(mm)(in)

This hardness testing method is used most common on metals. To find out the metals’ hardness values, Brinnel hardness values are generally used.

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