Torsional buckling and postbuckling of double-walled carbon nanotubes by nonlocal shear deformable shell model

Abstract This paper presents an investigation on the buckling and postbuckling of double-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) subjected to torsion in thermal environments. The double-walled carbon nanotube is modeled as a nonlocal shear deformable cylindrical shell which contains small scale effects and van der Waals interaction forces. The governing equations are based on higher order shear deformation shell theory with a von Karman–Donnell-type of kinematic nonlinearity and include the extension-twist and flexural-twist couplings. The thermal effects are also included and the material properties are assumed to be temperature-dependent and are obtained from molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The small scale parameter e 0 a is estimated by matching the buckling torque of CNTs observed from the MD simulation results with the numerical results obtained from the nonlocal shear deformable shell model. The results show that buckling torque and postbuckling behavior of CNTs are very sensitive to the small scale parameter e 0 a . The results reveal that the size-dependent and temperature-dependent material properties have a significant effect on the torsional buckling and postbuckling behavior of both single-walled and double-walled CNTs.