9 October 2026. Alemnis has enabled controlled, constant indentation strain rates of up to 100,000 s-1 (10^5 s-1) in high-strain-rate micromechanical testing, while maintaining quantitative load-displacement measurement. The company said the capability relies on true displacement control, in which the platform actively controls displacement throughout the experiment.
The platform maintains a defined, constant strain rate under dynamic conditions. According to the company, reaching very high strain rates requires displacement to be applied extremely rapidly while keeping precise control over the deformation process. With Alemnis ultra-high-strain-rate technology and high-performance electronics, true displacement control can be maintained at strain rates up to 10^5 s-1.
Conventional nanoindentation typically operates at much lower strain rates, while impact-based methods can reach higher rates but often with less control over the deformation history. Alemnis said it bridges this gap by combining ultra-high-speed actuation, fast data acquisition and true displacement control. The same technology can also be applied to microcompression and microtensile testing.
The capability was 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. For molybdenum, the results showed the hardness increase was primarily associated with changes in the dislocation structure and increasing dislocation density.
The capability was demonstrated in the study “Filling a Gap in Materials Mechanics: Nanoindentation at High Constant Strain Rates up to 10^5 s-1,” published in Small and available at https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.73215.
Source: Alemnis
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