Surface effect on buckling of microtubules in living cells using first-order shear deformation shell theory and standard linear solid model

In this paper, an orthotropic elastic shell model is developed for the buckling analysis of protein microtubules subjected to an axial force in living cells. Surface effects are taken into consideration based on the Gurtin-Murdoch elasticity theory. To incorporate the small scale effects, the nonlocal elasticity theory is also used. The influences of the viscoelastic surrounding cytoplasm are taken into account employing standard linear solid model. The governing differential equations are derived using the first-order shear deformation theory and the principle of virtual work. A numerical solution is obtained for the governing equations by employing differential quadrature method. To verify the accuracy of the numerical results, the present results for the axial buckling of microtubules stabilized with microtubule-associated proteins and taxol are compared with those of experimental observations in the literature. It is found that the orthotropic shell model with both surface and nonlocal effects can describe the buckling behavior of microtubules accurately, while the nonlocal shell model without surface effects fails to predict the buckling loads.