A highly effective energy mitigation system combining carbon nanotube and buckyballs

DY Hu and JX Hu and HL Jiang and J Xu, EUROPEAN PHYSICAL JOURNAL-SPECIAL TOPICS, 227, 155-166 (2018).

DOI: 10.1140/epjst/e2018-00058-6

By combining a carbon nanotube with buckyballs, a novel energy dissipation system is investigated for impact protection based on molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. To explore the energy mitigation mechanism of the carbon nanotube with buckyballs system (C-60-CNT), four types of C-60-CNT systems are considered. Computational results indicate that the deformation of buckyballs and the interaction between buckyballs and carbon nanotube play a critical role for the energy mitigation of C-60-CNT system. And results also show that the energy dissipation efficiency of C-60-CNT system is higher than water-CNT system, and more than 50% of impact energy can be mitigated. Further, parametric studies are conducted by varying governing factors, including length and diameter of the carbon nanotube, the number of the buckyballs and impacting energy. Results may help to understand the underlying mechanism of C-60-CNT system for impact protection, and explore the promising candidates of non-liquid energy mitigation system.

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