Fatigue characteristics of carbon nanotube blocks under compression

J. Suhr; L. Ci; P. Victor; P. M. Ajayan

doi:10.1117/12.775943

2 April 2008 Fatigue characteristics of carbon nanotube blocks under compression

J. Suhr, L. Ci, P. Victor, P. M. Ajayan

Proceedings Volume 6929, Behavior and Mechanics of Multifunctional and Composite Materials 2008; 69290Q (2008) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.775943
Event: SPIE Smart Structures and Materials + Nondestructive Evaluation and Health Monitoring, 2008, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the mechanical response from repeated high compressive strains on freestanding, long, vertically aligned multiwalled carbon nanotube membranes and show that the arrays of nanotubes under compression behave very similar to soft tissue and exhibit viscoelastic behavior. Under compressive cyclic loading, the mechanical response of nanotube blocks shows initial preconditioning and hysteresis characteristic of viscoeleastic materials. Furthermore, no fatigue failure is observed even at high strain amplitudes up to half million cycles. The outstanding fatigue life and extraordinary soft tissue-like mechanical behavior suggest that properly engineered carbon nanotube structures could mimic artificial muscles.

Citation Download Citation

J. Suhr, L. Ci, P. Victor, and P. M. Ajayan "Fatigue characteristics of carbon nanotube blocks under compression", Proc. SPIE 6929, Behavior and Mechanics of Multifunctional and Composite Materials 2008, 69290Q (2 April 2008); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.775943

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