Thermal-mechanical and nonlocal elastic vibration of single-walled carbon nanotubes conveying fluid

The thermal and nonlocal effect on the vibration and instability of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) conveying fluid is studied in this paper. Based on thermal elasticity-mechanics and nonlocal elasticity theory, an elastic beam model is developed for analysis of dynamical behavior of fluid conveying SWCNTs. Surrounded elastic medium is accounted in the formulation of motion equations. Differential quadrature method is used to do the numerical simulation. Influences of flow velocity, temperature change, Winkler constant, nonlocal effect and vibration mode orders on the natural frequencies of the nanotubes are investigated. The results show that the natural frequencies and critical flow velocity increase as the temperature changes increase, and the surrounded elastic medium can reduce the effect of the temperature changes and thermal effect can reduce the influence of nonlocal effect, whereas the nonlocal effect is enhanced as the flow velocity increase. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.