Vibration, buckling and impact of carbon nanotubes

Natural frequencies of the double and triple-walled carbon nanotubes are determined exactly and approximately for both types. Approximate solutions are found by using Bubnov-Galerkin and Petrov-Galerkin methods. For the first time explicit expressions are obtained for the natural frequencies of double and triple-walled carbon nanotubes for different combinations of boundary conditions. Comparison of the results with recent studies shows that the above methods constitute quick and effective alternative techniques to exact solution for studying the vibration properties of carbon nanotubes.;The natural frequencies of the clamped-clamped double-walled carbon nanotubes are obtained; exact solution is provided and compared with the solution reported in the literature. In contrast to earlier investigation, an analytical criterion is derived to establish the behavior of the roots of the characteristic equation. Approximate Bubnov-Galerkin solution is also obtained to compare natural frequencies at the lower end of the spectrum.;Simplified version of the Bresse-Timoshenko theory that incorporates the shear deformation and the rotary inertia is proposed for free vibration study of double-walled carbon nanotubes. It is demonstrated that the suggested set yields extremely accurate results for the lower spectrum of double-walled carbon nanotube.;The natural frequencies of double-walled carbon nanotubes based on simplified versions of Donnell shell theory are also obtained.;The buckling behavior of the double-walled carbon nanotubes under various boundary conditions is studied. First, the case of the simply supported double-walled carbon nanotubes at both ends is considered which is amenable to exact solution. Then, approximate methods of Bubnov-Galerkin and Petrov-Galerkin are utilized to check the efficacy of these approximations for the simply supported double-walled carbon nanotubes. Once the extreme accuracy is demonstrated for simply supported conditions, the approximate techniques are applied to two other cases of the boundary conditions, namely to clamped-clamped and simply supported-clamped double-walled carbon nanotubes. For the first time in the literature approximate expression for the buckling loads are reported for these boundary conditions.;The dynamic deflection of a single-walled carbon nanotube under impact loading is analyzed by following a recently study reported on the energy absorption capacity of carbon nanotubes under ballistic impact.