Mechanical properties of carbon nanotubes Mechanical properties of carbon nanotubes The mechanical properties of carbon nanotubes reveal them as one of the strongest materials in nature. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are long hollow cylinders of graphene. Although graphene sheets have 2D symmetry, carbon nanotubes by geometry have different properties in axial and radial directions. It has been shown that CNTs are very strong in the axial direction. Young's modulus on the order of and tensile strength of were obtained. Carbon nanotubes are the strongest and stiffest materials yet discovered in terms of tensile strength and elastic modulus respectively. This strength results from the covalent sp bonds
Reduced dimensions form see for example. RDFs are also constructed more reliably from the data than kinetic schemes. Figure 3 illustrates RDFs, kinetic schemes and two-state trajectories, and the relations among these. Given a two-state trajectory (generated from any mechanism), it is safer to go from the data and construct a RDF, rather than trying to construct the kinetic scheme from the data directly. With the constructed RDF, one can find several possible kinetic schemes very accurately (usually, one eventually tries constructing a kinetic scheme from the data), where these kinetic schemes are all equivalent (with regard to the data). Reduced dimensions form