The effects of chirality and boundary conditions on the mechanical properties of single-walled carbon nanotubes

Guoxin CAO, Xi CHEN*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Journal PublicationsJournal Article (refereed)peer-review

56 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The effects of chirality and boundary conditions on the elastic properties and buckling behavior of single-walled carbon nanotubes are investigated using atomistic simulations. The influences of the tube length and diameter are also included. It is found that the elastic properties of carbon nanotubes at small deformations are insensitive to the tube chirality and boundary conditions during compression. However, for large deformations occurred upon both compression and bending, the tube buckling behavior is shown to be very sensitive to both tube chirality and boundary conditions. Therefore, while the popular continuum thin shell model can be successfully applied to describe nanotube elastic properties at small deformation such as the Young's modulus, it cannot correctly account for the buckling behavior. These results may allow better evaluation of nanotube mechanical properties via appropriate atomistic simulations. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)5447-5465
Number of pages19
JournalInternational Journal of Solids and Structures
Volume44
Issue number17
Early online date11 Jan 2007
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 Aug 2007
Externally publishedYes

Funding

This work is supported in part by NSF CMS-0407743, NSF CMS-0643726, and in part by Columbia University Academic Quality Fund. We thank the anonymous reviewers whose suggestions have significantly improved the paper.

Keywords

  • Carbon nanotubes
  • Mechanical properties
  • Molecular simulation

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