Bending stability of multiwalled carbon nanotubes

This paper reports the results of an investigation on bending stability of an individual multiwalled carbon nanotube. Based on the point of view of continuum modeling, a multilayer shell model is presented for the pure bending buckling of an individual multiwalled carbon nanotube, in which the effect of van der Waals forces between adjacent two tubes is taken into account. Here, the critical bending moment and the bending buckling mode for three types of multiwalled carbon nanotubes with different layer numbers and ratios of radius to thickness are calculated. Results carried out show that the bending buckling mode corresponding the critical bending moment is unique, which is obviously different from the purely axial compression buckling of an individual multiwalled carbon nanotube. It is also seen from numerical examples that the distribution of the critical bending strain for each tube of multiwalled carbon nanotubes under bending is dependent on the radius-to-thickness ratio and the layer number of the multiwalled carbon nanotubes. The new features and interesting numerical results in the present work are helpful for the application and the design of nanostructures in which multiwalled carbon nanotubes act as basic elements.