Buckling of Double-walled Carbon Nanotubes

This paper is concerned with the buckling of double-walled carbon nanotubes (DWCNTs) under axial load. The DWCNTs are modelled as two cylindrical shells, one shell nested in the other and Winkler springs are introduced to connect them in order to simulate the van der Waals forces between the two nanotubes. By using the Donnell thin shell theory, we derive the governing equations for the buckling of the aforementioned double-shell model under axial compression. The equations are solved together with the boundary conditions and the critical buckling strains for cylindrical shells with different diameters and lengths. The critical strains are compared with the results obtained from molecular dynamic simulations and were found to be not so good in agreement. Better shell models have to be found for predicting more accurate results.