Helical carbon nanotube arrays: mechanical properties

An investigation of the effective mechanical properties of large arrays of carbon nanotubes assembled in helical geometries of circular cross-section is undertaken following two approaches. The first is a traditional textile-mechanics approach wherein the nanotube is treated as a continuous textile fiber, and the second utilized anisotropic elasticity theory to examine the behavior of a layered cylinder with layers consisting of discontinuous carbon nanotubes embedded in a polymeric matrix with the collimation direction in each layer following a helical path prescribed by a linear variation in the tangent of the helix angle with radial position. Stress distribution and effective elastic property results are presented for the two approaches. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.