Mechanical modelling of carbon nanomaterials from nanotubes to buckypaper

A combination of molecular structural mechanics and finite element method is used to mechanically model graphene, single-walled and multi-walled carbon nanotubes, nanotube bundles, buckypaper, and buckypaper composites. The mechanical model developed is used to determine the elastic properties of these nanostructures including elastic and shear moduli. In each step, different parameters are investigated including length and orientation of graphene sheets, chirality, diameter, number of walls and length of nanotubes, number of nanotubes in bundles, porosity of buckypaper and alignment of bundles in a buckypaper composite. The results are in good agreement with both the experimental results and those reported by other researchers either experimentally or theoretically.