Nonlocal strain gradient beam model for postbuckling and associated vibrational response of lipid supramolecular protein micro/nano-tubules

As a supramolecular construction, lipid protein micro/nano-tubules can be utilized in a variety of sustained biological delivery system. The high slenderness ratio of lipid tubules makes their hierarchical assembly into a desired architecture difficult. Therefore, an accurate prediction of mechanical behavior of lipid tubular is essential. The objective of this study is to capture size dependency in the postbuckling and vibrational response of the postbuckled lipid micro/nano-tubules more comprehensively. To this purpose, the nonlocal strain gradient elasticity theory is incorporated to the third-order shear deformation beam theory to develop an unconventional beam model. Hamilton's principle is put to use to establish the size-dependent governing differential equations of motion. After that, an improved perturbation technique in conjunction with Galerkin method is employed to obtain the nonlocal strain gradient load-frequency response and postbuckling stability curves of lipid micro/nano-tubules. It is revealed that by taking the nonlocal size effect into consideration, the influence of the type (geometrical parameters) of an axially compressed lipid micro/nano-tubule on its natural frequency in order decreases and increases within the prebuckling and postbuckling regimes. While the strain gradient size dependency plays an opposite role which causes that the influence of the type of lipid micro/nano-tubule on its natural frequency corresponding to the prebuckling and postbuckling domains increases and decreases, respectively.