Rayleigh-Ritz axial buckling analysis of single-walled carbon nanotubes with different boundary conditions

Eringen's nonlocality is incorporated into the shell theory to include the small-scale effects on the axial buckling of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) with arbitrary boundary conditions. To this end, the Rayleigh-Ritz solution technique is implemented in conjunction with the set of beam functions as modal displacement functions. Then, molecular dynamics simulations are employed to obtain the critical buckling loads of armchair and zigzag SWCNTs, the results of which are matched with those of nonlocal shell model to extract the appropriate values of nonlocal parameter. It is found that in contrast to the chirality, boundary conditions have a considerable influence on the proper values of nonlocal parameter. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.