Abstract
The effects of wavenumber and chirality on the axial compressive behavior and properties of wavy carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with multiple Stone-Wales defects are investigated using molecular mechanics simulations with the adaptive intermolecular reactive empirical bond-order potential. The wavy CNTs are assumed to be point-symmetric with respect to their axial centers. It is found that the wavy CNT models, respectively, exhibit a buckling point and long wavelength buckling mode regardless of the wavenumbers and chiralities examined. It is also found that the wavy CNTs have nearly the same buckling stresses as their pristine straight counterparts.
Highlights
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have a higher specific strength than conventional materials; for example, the density and Young’s modulus of steels are about 8 g/cm3 and 200 GPa, respectively, whereas those of CNTs are 2 g/cm3 and 1 TPa [1,2,3]
The results in this paper have demonstrated that atomic systems are able to exhibit long wavelength buckling
If the wavy CNTs analyzed in this study could be modeled as continuum thin walled tubes with appropriate material parameters, it might be shown that such continuum models reproduce the long wavelength buckling behavior revealed in this paper
Summary
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have a higher specific strength than conventional materials; for example, the density and Young’s modulus of steels are about 8 g/cm and 200 GPa, respectively, whereas those of CNTs are 2 g/cm and 1 TPa [1,2,3]. Using atomistic simulations rather than experimental tests, many researchers have analyzed the axial compressive properties of CNTs [6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13]. Sears and Batra analyzed the axial buckling behaviors of pristine, singlewalled (SW), and multiwalled (MW) CNTs [6, 7]. It is noteworthy that the CNTs analyzed by these researchers have defects at only one site along the tube axial direction [6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13]. Actual CNTs observed through experiments (Figure 1) have defects at multiple sites, resulting in a wavy geometry or multiple bending [4, 5]
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