Historically, a scratch has been viewed as a sliding indentation of an asperity over the surface of a material. This simplicity is deceiving, as the phenomenon of a scratch has many facets to its nature and requires much care regarding testing and evaluation. This becomes especially important when the scratch behavior of polymers is considered. Viscoelasticity, among other properties, plays a large role in the material response when a polymer is scratched. This creates a special challenge in developing test methods that address scratch behavior from a material science point of view. The challenge is augmented by the need to address the stress state the material experiences during a scratch. This is possible through numerical means (e.g. finite element methods [FEM]), but the adopted model must be able to encompass the entire material response. This chapter will present a development of the history of scratch testing that led to the development of a new testing and analysis methodology that can address polymer scratch behavior unambiguously. It will also be shown that significant advances have been made in numerical modeling of polymer scratch behavior via the FEMs, which supplements the experimental results to give a comprehensive view of polymer scratch behavior. 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
