Nonlocal Euler-Bernoulli Beam Theories with Material Nonlinearity and their Application to Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes

Abstract

The small-scale effect and the material nonlinearity significantly impact the mechanical properties of nanobeams. However, the combined effects of two factors have not attracted the attention of researchers. In the present paper, under the displacement’s Euler-Bernoulli assumption, we proposed two new nonlocal models to describe the mechanical properties of slender nanobeams for two centroid locus conditions: the locus extensibility and the locus inextensibility. Two new theories consider both the material nonlinearity and the small-scale effect induced by the non-local effect. The new models are used to analyze the static bending and the forced vibration for single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs). The results indicate that the stiffness’ softening effect induced by the material nonlinearity has more prominent impact than the nonlocal effect on SWCNT’s mechanical properties. Therefore, neglecting the material nonlinearity may cause qualitative mistakes.