On the fundamental relation used in nanoindentation with piecewisely defined indenters

The fundamental relation is widely used by the materials science community in the interpretation of nanoindentation data. Although piecewisely defined indenters are commonly used in the nanoindentation experiments, there is a lack of mathematical investigation on whether or not the fundamental relation holds true for them. This paper presents a general mathematical investigation, and it shows that the fundamental relation is still valid for indenters with piecewisely defined profiles.