Nonlinear bucking analysis of Polystyrene, Polyvinyl chloride, and Polypropylene cylindrical nano-composite shells reinforced by carbon nanotubes based on micro-mechanics and finite element methods

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 uni-axial compressive load to obtain a more conservative buckling response as compared with linear analysis. For this end, the Mori-Tanaka method is firstly utilized to estimate the effective elastic modulus of composites having aligned oriented straight CNTs. Then, a novel model based on micro-mechanics and finite element method is 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 are discussed. The proposed model is based on Mori-Tanaka micro-mechanics which is developed in ABAQUS finite element package. Herein, numerical results show different behavior from shell-type buckling to beam-type buckling in L/R =8 due to change of the cylinder’s aspect ratios. Moreover, the developed finite element code and numerical results are compared and validated with Mori-Tanaka analytical model in available literature and shown a good agreement.