Alemnis has enabled a major advance in high-strain-rate micromechanical testing, reaching controlled, constant indentation strain rates of up to 100,000 s-1 (105 s-1) while maintaining quantitative load-displacement measurement.
At the heart of this achievement is a key capability of Alemnis technology: true displacement control.
Unlike uncontrolled impact testing or approaches that rely on estimated average strain rates, the Alemnis platform actively controls displacement throughout the experiment. This makes it possible to maintain a defined, constant strain rate even under extremely dynamic conditions.
The result is not simply a higher testing speed, but a new level of experimental control at ultra-high strain rates.
True Displacement Control at Extreme Strain Rates
Reaching very high strain rates is challenging because displacement must be applied extremely rapidly while maintaining precise control over the deformation process.
With Alemnis ultra-high-strain-rate technology and high-performance electronics, true displacement control can now be maintained at strain rates up to 105 s-1.
This enables researchers to obtain quantitative load-displacement data under well-defined loading conditions rather than relying on impact velocity or uncontrolled transient events.
Bridging Nanoindentation and Dynamic Testing
Conventional nanoindentation offers excellent precision and control but typically operates at much lower strain rates. Impact-based methods can access higher rates, but often with less control over the deformation history.
Alemnis bridges this gap by combining ultra-high-speed actuation, fast data acquisition and true displacement control.
The same technology can also be applied beyond nanoindentation, including microcompression and microtensile testing, allowing researchers to study dynamic mechanical behavior across different specimen geometries and loading modes.
Quantitative Testing up to 100,000 s-1
The capability has been demonstrated on molybdenum, nanocrystalline nickel and fused silica across five orders of magnitude in strain rate.
A clear hardness increase was observed at high strain rates in all three materials.
Because the experiments were performed under controlled conditions, the measured mechanical response could also be linked to the underlying deformation mechanisms.
For molybdenum, the results showed that the hardness increase was primarily associated with changes in the dislocation structure and increasing dislocation density.
This highlights the value of controlled high-strain-rate testing: researchers can investigate not only how materials respond at extreme deformation rates, but also why their behavior changes.
Expanding the Limits of Micromechanical Testing
The significance of reaching 105 s-1 is therefore not simply the strain-rate value itself.
The key achievement is reaching this regime while preserving the core strengths of Alemnis technology: true displacement control, high-speed data acquisition, quantitative load-displacement measurement and precise control of the deformation history.
This opens new possibilities for studying materials under conditions relevant to aerospace, defense, semiconductors, microelectronics, high-speed manufacturing and other demanding applications.
The capability was recently demonstrated in the study “Filling a Gap in Materials Mechanics: Nanoindentation at High Constant Strain Rates up to 105 s-1,” published in Small and available at https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.73215.