Indentation testing is a well-known method to measure the rate dependence of the strength of materials at small scales through a variety of different testing methodologies. In many cases, a power-law creep constitutive relationship relating the indentation strain rate to the hardness, or the mean pressure applied to the material by the indenter, is assumed. However, this method of analysis does not explicitly include elastic effects, which for some testing methods may be significant. In this work, a new method of analysis that explicitly considers the elastic effects is presented. The conditions and materials for which the elastic contribution is non-negligible are identified, and simple closed-form analytical expressions are developed to account for the elastic effects. This leads to improvements in the measurement of power law creep parameters such as the stress exponent and creep coefficient. Experimental assessment of the new analysis procedures is presented for amorphous selenium (Se) and calcium fluoride (CaF₂). After accounting for the elastic effects, an equivalence of different indentation creep testing methods is observed for Se due to the fact that this material has a very nearly history independent plastic response and no indentation size effect (ISE). On the other hand, significant differences are observed in the case of CaF₂ because of indentation size effects. The findings of this work have important implications for several widely used indentation creep measurement methods such as the constant strain rate method (CSR) and the strain rate jump test (SRJ). Based on the results, guidelines for performing indentation creep tests with improved precision and accuracy are presented.

压痕测试是一种众所周知的方法，可通过各种不同的测试方法在小范围内测量材料强度的速率依赖性。在许多情况下，假定压痕应变率与硬度或压头施加到材料上的平均压力之间存在幂律蠕变本构关系。然而，这种分析方法没有明确包括弹性效应，这对于某些测试方法可能很重要。在这项工作中，提出了一种明确考虑弹性效应的新分析方法。确定了弹性贡献不可忽略的条件和材料，并开发了简单的封闭式解析表达式来解释弹性效应。这导致对幂律蠕变参数（例如应力指数和蠕变系数）的测量的改进。对无定形硒 (Se) 和氟化钙 (CaF) 的新分析程序进行了实验评估₂）。考虑到弹性效应后，观察到不同压痕蠕变测试方法对硒的等效性，因为这种材料具有非常接近历史独立的塑性响应且没有压痕尺寸效应 (ISE)。另一方面，由于压痕尺寸效应，在 CaF ₂的情况下观察到显着差异。这项工作的发现对几种广泛使用的压痕蠕变测量方法具有重要意义，例如恒定应变率法 (CSR) 和应变率跳跃测试 (SRJ)。基于这些结果，提出了以更高的精度和准确度进行压痕蠕变试验的指南。