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Carbon nanotube fiber design

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The carbon-nanotube bundle geometry.
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Rupture of the bundle at high tensile strain.

Work by Charles Cornwell and Charles Welch at the US Army ERDC to model the tensile response of bundles of carbon nanotubes containing 1.2 million atoms, with additional cross-linking bonds between individual tubes, using the AIREBO force field. They found the fibers had strengths up to 60 GPa, which is about 30x higher than that of high-strength steel.

Related publications

  • Very-high-strength (60-GPa) carbon nanotube fiber design based on molecular dynamics simulations, C. F. Cornwell and C. R. Welch, J. Chem. Phys. 134, 204708 (2011). doi:10.1063/1.3594197