On the snap-through time of a nanoscale elastic strip

ZY Zhao and JX Liu and AK Soh and C Tang, ACTA MECHANICA SINICA, 38, 121219 (2022).

DOI: 10.1007/s10409-022-09010-x

We have examined the elastic snap-through behaviors of single crystal copper strips numerically and theoretically to investigate factors that influence the characteristic snap-through time scale. The strip is simply supported on both ends, and the snap-through is launched by suddenly removing the concentrated forces that have already been statically applied to produce an initial bending configuration. On the one hand, the process is implemented in the molecular dynamics (MD) simulator LAMMPS. On the other hand, a theoretical formulation is provided with the consideration of surface tension. Increasing surface tension is found to increase the snap-through time. The results show that the snap-through behavior is further closely related to the magnitude of the initially stored deformation and the strip thickness. Finally, snap-through times provided by the above numerical and theoretical analyses are on the same order of magnitude. This is an interesting agreement, especially considering that the huge gap of time scales between MD simulations and experiments has been a well-known fundamental issue. We believe that the present study about spontaneous processes such as snap-through has cast some light on the fundamental issue that deformation in MD simulations generally happens much faster than in physical experiments.

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