Elastic properties of imperfect single-walled carbon nanotubes under axial tension

The elastic properties of imperfect armchair and zig-zag single-walled carbon nanotubes under axial tension are studied by molecular dynamics simulations. Vacancy defects of different sizes and at different locations are reconstructed into carbon nanotubes and their elastic properties such as the Young's modulus, tensile strength and tensile failure strain are obtained and compared with their perfectly structured counterparts. Simulation results indicate that the elastic properties are more sensitive to the location than to the size of the vacancy defects. Young's modulus, tensile strength and tensile failure strain of a carbon nanotube suffer significant degradation when the vacancy defects are located along the traverse direction. The diameter effects of the carbon nanotubes are also reported in this work. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.