  Indentation is a common experimental technique to study the mechanics of
polymeric materials. The main advantage of using indentation is because this
provides a direct correlation between the microstructure and the small-scale
mechanical response, which is otherwise difficult within the standard tensile
testing. Here, majority of studies have investigated hydrogels, microgels
and/or elastomers. However, a lesser investigated system is the indentation in
highly cross-linked polymer (HCP) networks, where the complex network structure
plays a key role in dictating their physical properties. In this work, we
investigate the structure-property relationship in HCP networks using the
computational indentation of a generic model. We establish a correlation
between the local bond breaking, the network rearrangement, and the small-scale
mechanics. The results are compared with the elastic-plastic deformation model.
HCPs harden upon indentation.
