A study on the effect of defects on the buckling of double-walled carbon nanotubes under compression based on a new atomic-continuum coupling method

An atomic-continuum coupling (ACC) method is developed for the nonlinear mechanical analysis of defective double-walled carbon nanotubes (DWCNTs). The moving least squares (MLS) approximation is resorted to bridge the fully atomic discrete structures of defective DWCNTs and the corresponding virtual continuum solids. The intrinsic mechanic laws implied in nanostructures can be accurately mapped into the mechanical governing equations of the continuum models. Based on ACC method, a numerical computational scheme is developed for predicting the buckling and contact behaviors of defective DWCNTs, which do not need any numerical integration method to calculate potential functional and its derivatives. The numerical tests show that this method can furnish good predictions even with a small number of nodes. It is found that Stone–Wales (SW) defects can lead to greatly decrease in the buckling properties of DWCNTs. In contrary, the complex interlayer van der Waals (vdW) interactions can enhance the buckling resistance of DWCNTs.