Mechanical buckling of single-walled carbon nanotubes: Atomistic simulations

Various geometric sizes and helical types (i.e., armchair, zigzag, and chiral) of single-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are considered in molecular dynamics simulations in order to systematically examine the length-to-radius ratio and chirality effects on the buckling mechanism. The buckling strain is getting smaller as the CNT becomes slender for most nanotubes, which implies that the slender nanotubes have lower buckling resistance regardless of the radius of the CNTs. The applicability of the continuum buckling theory, which has been well developed for thin tubes, on predicting the buckling strain of the CNT is also examined. In general, the corresponding buckling strain and buckling type predicted by the continuum buckling theory could agree reasonably well with simulation results except at the transition region due to the competition of two buckling mechanisms.