Indentation of solid membranes on rigid substrates with van der Waals attraction

We revisit the indentation of a thin solid sheet of size R_{sheet} suspended on a circular hole of radius R≪R_{sheet} in a smooth rigid substrate, addressing the effects of boundary conditions at the hole's edge. Introducing a basic theoretical model for the van der Waals (vdW) sheet-substrate attraction, we demonstrate the dramatic effect of replacing the clamping condition (Schwerin model) with a sliding condition, whereby the supported part of the sheet is allowed to slide towards the indenter and relax the induced hoop compression through angstrom-scale deflections from the thermodynamic equilibrium (determined by the vdW potential). We highlight the possibility that the indentation force F may not exhibit the commonly anticipated cubic dependence on the indentation depth (F∝δ^{3}), in which the proportionality constant is governed by the sheet's stretching modulus and the hole's radius R, but rather a pseduolinear response F∝δ, whereby the proportionality constant is governed by the bending modulus, the vdW attraction, and the sheet's size R_{sheet}≫R.