Indentation creep of antimonial lead alloys

摘要

Antimonial lead alloys are lead-base soft materials, containing up to 5 wt% antimony. These alloys have long been used in the manufacture of cable sheathing and grids in lead/acid batteries [1,2]. Among different characteristics of these soft materials creep behavior is of great interest. Several papers have addressed the possibility of gaining information on creep properties by the use of indentation or long time hardness tests [3-6]. When a constant load is applied on the surface of a sample with a suitable indenter for a period of time, yielding and creep take place and therefore, the indenter penetrates the material. The variation of the indentation size, expressed as diameter (Brinell test), diagonal length (Vickers test), or penetration depth of a cylindrical indenter (Impression test) is monitored with dwell time. The study of time-dependent flow or creep of the material is therefore made possible by means of simple hardness tests. These indentation tests are simpler than creep tests because they do not require sample machining and can be carried out on small simpole flat specimens [7, 8].