Flexural wave propagation analysis of single-walled carbon nanotubes using molecular structural mechanics approach

Abstract

In the present study, the flexural wave propagation along single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) is investigated using molecular structural mechanics approach. The dispersion curves associated to the wave propagation characteristics (i.e., phase velocity versus wave number) of (5,5) and (10,10) armchair test tubes are obtained and compared with the results of the Molecular Dynamics (MD), non-local elastic Timoshenko beam model (NT) and non-local Euler beam model (NE). In addition to the advantages of the present approach such as low computational cost against MD technique and its independency to any extra parameters which have to be experimentally evaluated such as unknown length scales in NT and NE methods, the results show good agreement with the MD results, especially at the high wave number (small wavelength) regimes, which the NT and NE techniques fail to achieve an acceptable predictions.