Application to Nanomaterials

Summary

Nanotechnology and nanomaterials are subject to extensive academic and industrial research. Since their discovery in 1991, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) attracted considerable interest due to their exceptional physical, electrical, mechanical and chemical properties. The macroscopic structures of CNTs can be classified into two categories: single‐walled CNTs (SWCNT) and multiwalled CNTs (MWCNTs). At the nanoscale, CNTs are characterized by a diversity of structures and morphologies that induce a very high variability of their mechanical properties and therefore considerable uncertainty on measurements. This chapter describes a method for determining the mechanical properties of nanomaterials, combining experimentation and modeling by applying the reliability‐based optimization method (RBDO). The mechanical properties of nanomaterials are investigated by a model based on the finite element method and are characterized by the nanoindentation technique. The RBDO method is used to estimate elastic–plastic properties of CNTs. The numerical results show that RBDO is an effective method to assess the properties of CNTs.