Buckling of single-walled carbon nanotubes with and without defects.

This paper studies the buckling behavior of simply-simply supported Single-walled Carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) with and without defects. The buckling of carbon nanotubes without defects was investigated using the Finite element method (FEM) and analytical treatment and that of carbon nanotubes with defects was studied only by FEM. The carbon nanotubes were modeled as beams and shells. Computations showed that beam elements in the given form provided varying results as shells in their numerical or analytical manner for a small aspect ratio. The defects resulted from the removal of randomly determined carbon atoms and beam elements connected to the nodes. The increasing number of defects decreased the critical buckling force of SWCNTs. The decrease in the critical buckling force was almost the same for SWCNTs with the same diameter but with different chirality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]