Generally, there are two distinct effects in modifying the properties of low-dimensional nanostructures: surface effect (SE) due to increased surface-volume ratio and quantum size effect (QSE) due to quantum confinement in reduced dimension. The SE has been widely shown to affect the elastic constants and mechanical properties of nanostructures. Here, we demonstrate that QSE can also have a str...

Methods which relate the elastic constants of thermodynamic systems to the fluctuations of the pressure or the volume are called ‘‘fluctuation’’ methods. In this paper we derive expressions, within the fluctuation method, for determining elastic constants in systems composed of hard spheres tethered by inextensible bonds. Such systems are frequently used as athermal models of real physical syst...

A study is conducted of the influence of microscale geometric and physical randomness on effective moduli of a continuum approximation of disordered microstruetures. A particular class of microstructures investigated is that of planar Delaunay networks made up of linear elastic rods connected by joints. Three types of networks are considered: Delaunay networks with random geometry and random sp...