Nanomechanical behavior of single crystalline SiC nanotubes revealed by molecular dynamics simulations

Abstract

Molecular dynamics simulations with Tersoff potentials were used to study the response of single crystalline SiC nanotubes under tensile, compressive, torsional, combined tension-torsional, and combined compression-torsional strains. The simulation results reveal that the nanotubes deform through bond-stretching and breaking and exhibit brittle properties under uniaxial tensile strain, except for the thinnest nanotube at high temperatures, which fails in a ductile manner. Under uniaxial compressive strain, the SiC nanotubes buckle with two modes, i.e., shell buckling and column buckling, depending on the length of the nanotubes. Under torsional strain, the nanotubes buckle either collapse in the middle region into a dumbbell-like structure for thinner wall thicknesses or fail by bond breakage for the largest wall thickness. Both the tensile failure stress and buckling stress decrease under combined tension-torsional and combined compression-torsional strain, and they decrease with increasing torsional rate under combined loading.