Vickers Hardness Number Calculator

Vickers Hardness Test

The Vickers hardness test presses a square pyramid diamond indenter into a material and measures the diagonal length of the resulting indentation. The Vickers hardness number is HV = 1.8544 × F / d², where F is the applied load in kgf and d is the average of the two diagonal lengths in millimeters.

The constant 1.8544 comes from the geometry of the indenter (a pyramid with a 136° angle between opposite faces). Vickers testing works across a very wide hardness range and on both very hard and very thin materials, making it one of the most versatile hardness scales in materials testing.