Influences of surface effects on large deflections of nanomembranes with arbitrary shapes by the coupled BE-RBFs method

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze large deflections of nanomembranes including surface effects with arbitrary shapes. The nonlinear differential equations of nanomembranes are formulated by using the nonlinear kinematic relations and the surface elasticity theory of Gurtin–Murdoch. The principle of virtual work is applied to establish the three governing partial differential equations of nanomembranes. The coupled boundary element-radial basis functions (BE-RBFs) method is developed to solve the complicated nonlinear problem of nanomembranes. The proposed methodology is based on the analog equation method in conjunction with radial basis functions in order that the boundary line integrals and boundary elements are only involved. The validation and accuracy of the present method are evaluated by comparing the obtained results with those available from other numerical solutions. The proposed formulation can provide the numerical results that correspond to the experimental findings of the monolayer circular graphene membrane by specifying the proper surface properties. The influences of the surface elastic constants and residual surface stress on large deflection responses of nanomembranes are evidently investigated. Moreover, some numerical results of the present formulations could serve as a benchmark for the numerical evaluation of future research. Finally, the interesting results of large deflection analysis of the various nanomembrane shapes using the coupled BE-RBFs method are highlighted.