Helical carbon nanotube arrays: mechanical properties

An investigation of the effective mechanical properties of large arrays of carbon nanotubes assembled in helical geometries of circular cross-section is undertaken following two approaches. The first is a traditional textile-mechanics approach wherein the nanotube is treated as a continuous textile fiber, and the second utilized anisotropic elasticity theory to examine the behavior of a layered cylinder with layers consisting of discontinuous carbon nanotubes embedded in a polymeric matrix with the collimation direction in each layer following a helical path prescribed by a linear variation in the tangent of the helix angle with radial position. Stress distribution and effective elastic property results are presented for the two approaches.