The paper presents the study on the flexural wave propagation in a single-walled carbon nanotube through the use of the continuum mechanics and the molecular dynamics simulation based on the Terroff-Brenner potential. The study focuses on the wave dispersion caused not only by the rotary inertia and the shear deformation in the model of a traditional Timoshenko beam, but also by the nonlocal elasticity characterizing the microstructure of carbon nanotube in a wide frequency range up to THz. For this purpose, the paper starts with the dynamic equation of a generalized Timoshenko beam made of the nonlocal elastic material, and then gives the dispersion relations of the flexural wave in the nonlocal elastic Timoshenko beam, the traditional Timoshenko beam and the Euler beam, respectively. Afterwards, it presents the molecular dynamics simulations for the flexural wave propagation in an armchair (5,5) and an armchair (10,10) single-walled carbon nanotubes for a wide range of wave numbers. The simulation results show that the Euler beam holds for describing the dispersion of flexural waves in the two single-walled carbon nanotubes only when the wave number is small. The Timoshenko beam provides a better prediction for the dispersion of flexural waves in the two single-walled carbon nanotubes when the wave number becomes a little bit large. Only the nonlocal elastic Timoshenko beam is able to predict the decrease of phase velocity when the wave number is so large that the microstructure of carbon nanotubes has a significant influence on the flexural wave dispersion.

• Received 26 October 2004

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.71.195412