On the nanoscale behaviour of single-wall C, BN and SiC nanotubes

The paper presents a numerical study of defect-free single-wall carbon, boron nitride and silicon carbide armchair and zigzag nanotubes, through a simple stick-and-spring model, based on Morse and cosine potential functions. The study investigates the relaxed configuration of the tubes and gives a comprehensive evaluation of their elastic constants, which is performed by framing tensile, torsional and radial tests within the membrane behaviour of a Donnell thin shell model. Extensive comparisons with reference ab-initio results are given and used to refine some parameters of the potential functions for hexagonal silicon carbide nanomaterials.