Effect of higher-order deformation gradients on buckling of single-walled carbon nanotubes

A single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) is treated as a tubular Bernoulli-Euler beam and the higher-order deformation gradients are involved to establish a higher-order multiscale beam model. The higher-order Cauchy-Born rule is used to calculate the deformation of bond vectors in the representative cell and the strain energy density is equivalent to the energy per unit surface area, calculated from the Brenner potential. On the basis of the classical Bernoulli-Euler beam theory, the second-order deformation gradients with respect to the axial direction are also considered. The total strain energy is expressed as an integral equation, in which all parameters are obtained by calculating the constitutive response around the circumference. The physical meaning of these parameters is discussed in detail. The global buckling of SWCNTs is studied, and the critical buckling force is obtained as the analytical formula for different boundary conditions. The critical buckling force is plotted against the tube chirality, tube radius and tube length, and it is discovered that the contribution of the higher-order terms rapidly becomes large when the tube radius or length is small enough. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.