Anisotropy in the hardness and friction of calcium fluoride crystals

Anisotropy in the Knoop indentation hardness and the friction of diamond cones on calcium fluoride crystals has been investigated at experimental temperatures from 20 to 300° C. It is shown that the directions of minimum and maximum indentation hardness, on the (001) plane, are 110 and 100 respectively whilst the 1¯10 are harder than the 11¯2 directions on the (111) plane. Also, the sliding friction in the (001) plane is greatest in the 110 directions and least in the 100 and, on the (111) cleavage plane, [¯1¯12] sliding leads to higher friction than [11¯2]. The nature of anisotropy, for both hardness and friction measurements, does not change over the experimental temperature range covered in this work. Observations on the resultant deformation are made and these anisotropic properties are explained in terms of the effective resolved shear stresses developed on the {100} 011 primary slip systems at all experimental temperatures.