Effect of the van der Waals interaction on analysis of double-walled carbon nanotubes

This paper presents the research on the analysis of the van der Waals (vdW) interaction on double-walled carbon nanotubes (DWNTs) via an elastic beam model. The parametric studies on the size of DWNTs are conducted to show the effect of vdW interaction on the analysis of both a cantilever DWNT subjected to force at the free tip and a DWNT subjected to pure bending. In addition, the kink instability for the cantilever DWNT is analyzed based on the proposed beam model. It is hoped that the research will provide mechanical models for the analysis of both single-walled nanotubes (SWNTs) and multi-walled nanotubes (MWNTs), as well as for kink instability analysis of carbon nanotubes (CNTs).