In particular, the Korsunsky method re-defines hardness and expresses it in terms of the energy (work) associated with indenting the surface of a material by the probe.
The original application of the approach was developed for the problem of finding the composite hardness of a coated system.
Jha et al derived an expression that determines the true hardness of a material from its nominal counterpart.
The advantage of the modified work-of-indentation is that it does not require the computation of contact area, which is the main limitation of the conventional Oliver-Pharr method.
The approach requires further modification in order to incorporate effect of bluntness at the tip of an indenter on the measured hardness of a material.