The Nanomechanics of Carbon Nanotubes and Graphene


J. P. Wilber

Carbon nanotubes have remarkable mechanical properties, most notably
an extraordinary tensile strength combined with the flexibility to
sustain large compressive loads and bending deformations elastically.
Nanotubes inherit many of their remarkable properties from graphene, a
single-atom-thick sheet of carbon atoms which wraps into a cylinder to
form a nanotube.  In this talk I discuss some of the interesting
issues that arise when modeling carbon nanotubes and graphene within
the framework of continuum mechanics.  I also present some of my
research group's recent results combining atomistic techniques and
continuum mechanical approaches to study imperfect bifurcation
problems for interacting graphene layers.