Surface damage of soda-lime-silica glasses: indentation scratch behavior

Contact mechanics problems are of fundamental interest both to understand the process of surface damage and matter removal in brittle materials, and to develop a method to evaluate their scratch resistance. In order to get insight into these problems in the case of soda-lime-silica glasses, a classical indentation apparatus was used, and an original scratch experimental setup was designed, allowing for a monotonic loading (or unloading) of the indenter combined with a controlled sliding of the specimen beneath the indenter. The influences of the normal load, the moisture level and the glass composition have been studied, and clear relationships were established between the glass compositions and the indentation-scratching behavior. The indentation and scratching characteristics such as the critical-crack-initiation loads and the transition loads between the different scratch regimes were correlated and interpreted in the light of the brittleness index and structural considerations.