section 1. Contact mechanics -- section 2. Journey towards nanoindentation -- section 3. Static contact behavior of glass -- section 4. Dynamic contact behavior of glass -- section 5. Static contact behavior of ceramics -- section 6. Static behavior of shock-deformed ceramics -- section 7. Nanoindentation behavior of ceramic-based composites -- section 8. Nanoindentation behavior of functional ceramics -- section 9. Static contact behavior of ceramic coatings -- section 10. Static contact behavior of ceramic thin films -- section 11. Nanoindentation behavior on ceramic-based natural hybrid nanocomposites -- section 12. Some unresolved issues in nanoindentation.

Glass and ceramics are brittle in nature, but are often used in electronics, space, defense, biomedical, and many day-to-day applications, where mechanical disintegration may cause total failure of the particular application. Evaluation and in-depth knowledge of nanomechanical characterization helps to improve process parameters or may help identify the critical failure point. Therefore, it is challenging as well as important to measure mechanical properties such as hardness and Young's modulus at the local microstructural length scale, because any mechanical disintegration starts from the sub-micron scale of the microstructure mainly for brittle materials, including glass, ceramic, ceramic matrix composites, and coatings. However, this is not always easy; processing of ceramics in particular is difficult with zero defect. Processing flaws or a characteristically heterogeneous microstructure always hinder the nanomechanical measurements. In general, the scatter in the nanoindentation data is very high for ceramics, coatings, and thin films, presumably due to their heterogeneous structure. This book shows how scatter data may be possible to explain with the application of Weibull statistics. It also offers an in-depth discussion of indentation size effect, the evolution of shear induced deformation during indentation, and scratches and includes a collection of related research works-- Provided by publisher.