Stress-Strain Behavior of Carbon Nanotube Under Compressive Loading

The mechanical behavior of carbon nanotube (CNT) is investigated under compressive loading by using molecular dynamics (MD) simulation to predict the mechanical parameters, deformation and the failure mechanism of different armchair and zigzag CNTs having different lengths. Subsequently, the effect of hydrogenation of CNT on its buckling behavior is also studied. Adaptive Intermolecular Reactive Empirical Bond Order Potential function (AIREBO) is employed between the carbon-carbon and carbon-hydrogen atoms to consider the effect of bonded and non-bonded interactions. The nanotubes of higher slenderness ratio are found to have the smaller buckling strain. The obtained critical buckling strains are compared with that of continuum shell and column like buckling model, and it is reported that disregarding of chirality of CNTs, continuum column like buckling model can predict the value of buckling strain with reasonable accuracy for the CNTs of higher slenderness ratio. Because of hydrogenation of CNT(5,5), the Young's Modulus of CNT is reduced by almost 35%, whereas, the increase in buckling strain of same CNT is nearly 16%.