Torsional vibration of carbon nanotube-buckyball systems based on nonlocal elasticity theory

In this paper, torsional vibration analysis of single-walled carbon nanotube-buckyball systems is carried out. The buckyball is attached to single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) at one end and the other end of SWCNT is fixed. Such nanostructures are promising for tunable nanoresonators whose frequency can be altered by attaching different buckyballs. Nonlocal elasticity is utilized to examine the small-scale effect on the nanoresonators and derive the torsional frequency equation and nonlocal transcendental equation. Based on these equations, numerical results are obtained for the dependence of the frequency on the mass moment of inertia. The analytical expressions of nonlocal frequencies are also derived when the buckyballs mass moment of inertias are much larger than that of SWCNTs. In addition, effort is made to study the influence of nonlocal parameter and attached buckyball on the torsional frequency of the nanoresonators. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.