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Polydomain liquid crystalline (nematic) elastomers have highly unusualmechanical properties, dominated by the dramatically non-linear stress-strainresponse that reflects stress-induced evolution of domain patterns. Here, westudy the classical Hertz indentation problem in such a material.Experimentally, we find that polydomain nematic elastomers display a smallerexponent than the classical 3/2 in the load vs. indentation depth response.This is puzzling: asymptotically a softer stress-strain response requires alarger exponent at small loads. We resolve this by theory where three regimesare identified -- an initial elastic regime for shallow indentation that isobscured in experiment, an intermediate regime where local domain patternevolution leads to a smaller scaling in agreement with experiments, and a finalstiffening regime where the completion of local domain evolution returns theresponse to elastic. This three-regime structure is universal, but theintermediate exponent is not. We discuss how our work reveals a new mechanismof enhanced adhesion for pressure-sensitive adhesion of nematic elastomers.

Softening of the Hertz indentation contact in nematic elastomers