BUCKLING PROPERTIES OF PRE-STRESSED MULTI-WALLED CARBON NANOTUBES

MD Ma and LM Shen and LF Wang and QS Zheng, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR MULTISCALE COMPUTATIONAL ENGINEERING, 11, 17-26 (2013).

DOI: 10.1615/IntJMultCompEng.2012003185

Pre-stressed multi-walled carbon nanotubes (PS-MWCNTs) have (a) interwall distances less than 0.34 nm, (b) highest Young's moduli, and (c) interlayer shear strengths several orders higher than those of normal MWCNTs. In this paper, the buckling behaviors of PS-MWCNTs with two to six layers have been studied using both molecular mechanics simulation and continuum mechanics models. Considering the interlayer distance as the key factor, we reveal three features of the buckling behavior of PS-MWCNTs subjected to axial loading: (1) the buckling membrane force is not a monotonic function of interlayer distance, depending on the nanonotube index (i.e. diameter); (2) the buckling membrane force increases as the interlayer distance decreases for PS- MWCNTs with fixed intertube chirality, which is a combined effect of interlayer distance and tube diameter; and (3) for PS-MWCNTs with the same innermost tube, the buckling membrane force increases as the number of walls increases. Furthermore, molecular mechanics simulation and the multi-shell continuum model agree on the trend of the buckling membrane force as a function of interlayer distance, tube chirality index, and number of layers. These results can serve as a bridge between the molecular simulation and the continuum model for the buckling behaviors of PS-MWCNT.

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