Mechanical, acoustic and thermal properties of nanostructures (2005-2008)

Carbon-Nano-Tubes (CNT) are a prime example for a system which needs to be treated atomistically (i.e. the interactions between atoms need to be considered when the mechanical properties are investigated) but where the study of systems that include CNTs are usually too big to be studied numerically in this way.

For larger structures, a common approach is to employ continuum theory to be able to describe effectively their mechanial behaviour. In this project, we investigate how appropriate such an approach for CNT is. This touches on the more general topic of multi-physics simulations and the relationship between atomistic simulations (using Molecular Dynamics) and the application of elasticity theory on continuos systems (in the spirit of finite elements and continuum elasticity).

[1] http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/26/1/031