Nanoindentation can be considered a

Nanoindentation can be considered as a process of indenting a half-space with a rigid indenter. For a 1 µm tip, since the tip radius is so small, the spherical indenter can be modeled as an axisymmetric conical indenter with an effective cone angle of 45º. The selection of a conical tip implies that the conical area dominates binder-surface interactions. For the spherical part, the radius of the contact area is given by