Hardness a fixed height onto a material. This type of hardness is related to elasticity. The device used to take this measurement is known as a scleroscope. Two scales that measures rebound hardness are the Leeb rebound hardness test and Bennett hardness scale. There are five hardening processes: Hall-Petch strengthening, work hardening, solid solution strengthening, precipitation hardening, and martensitic transformation. In solid mechanics, solids generally have three responses to force, depending on the amount of force and the type of material: Strength is a measure of the extent of a material's elastic range, or elastic and plastic ranges together. This is
Indentation hardness used to quantify material characteristics at smaller scales. Measuring mechanical properties for materials, for instance, of thin films, can not be done using conventional uniaxial tensile testing. As a result, techniques testing material "hardness" by indenting a material with a very small impression have been developed to determine to estimate these properties. Hardness measurements quantify the resistance of a material to plastic deformation. Indentation hardness tests compose the majority of processes used to determine material hardness, and can be divided into two classes: "microindentation" and "macroindentation" tests. Microindentation tests typically have forces less than . Hardness, however, cannot be considered