Nonlinear Buckling Analysis of Polystyrene, Polyvinyl Chloride, and Polypropylene Cylindrical Nano-Composite Shells Reinforced by Carbon Nanotubes Based on Micro-Mechanics and Finite Element Method

In this paper, we present nonlinear buckling instability analysis of polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride, and polypropylene nano-composite shell-structures reinforced by carbon nanotubes (CNTs) under the uni-axial compressive load to obtain a more conservative buckling response as compared with linear analysis. For this purpose, the Mori-Tanaka method was firstly utilized to estimate the effective elastic modulus of composites having aligned straight CNTs. Then, a novel model based on micro-mechanics and finite element method was developed for buckling analysis of a cylindrical nano-composite shell reinforced by CNTs and various effects of different types of polymer matrices (Polystyrene, Polyvinyl chloride, and Polypropylene), CNTs volume fraction, CNTs orientation angle, aspect ratio of cylinder, and different boundary conditions (simply supported and clamped ends) on critical buckling load of cylindrical nano-composite shells were discussed. The proposed model is based on Mori-Tanaka micro-mechanics which is developed in the ABAQUS finite element package. The numerical results showed different behavior from shell-type buckling to beam-type buckling in L/R =8 due to the change of the cylinder aspect ratios. Moreover, the developed finite element code and numerical results were compared and validated with Mori-Tanaka analytical model in the available literature and showed a good agreement.