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Indentation has been widely used for investigating the mechanical behavior ofglasses. However, how the various microscopic properties (such as atomicstructure and mechanics) of glass evolve from the immediate contact with theindenter to the far-field regions, and how these observables are correlated toeach other remain largely unknown. Here, using large-scale molecular dynamicssimulations, we investigate the response of a prototypical sodium silicateglass under shape contact load up to an indentation depth of 25 nm. Both theshort- and intermediate-range structures are found to exhibit notable changesbelow the indent, indicating that indentation deformation induces a moredisordered and heterogeneous network structure. In addition, we find that theindentation-induced changes of local properties all exhibit an exponentialdecaying behavior with increasing distance from the indent. Comparison of thecharacteristic decay lengths of these local properties indicates that thestructural origins of shear flow and densification are the changes of thenetwork modifier's coordination environment and the inter-tetrahedralconnection, respectively. The decay of densification is considerably slowerthan that of shear strain, implying that the former might contribute more tothe deformation at the far-field regions. Our findings not only contribute toan atomistic understanding of the indentation response of silicate glasses butalso pave the way towards rational design of damage-resistant glassy materials.

Nanoindentation-induced evolution of atomic-level properties in silicate glass: Insights from molecular dynamics simulations