Application of nonlocal continuum mechanics in modeling of carbon nanotubes and graphenes

号称“神奇材料”的石墨烯是一种超强透明的碳，只有一个原子厚度，可用于太阳能电池板和轻质复合材料。碳纳米管是由石墨烯制成的圆柱体。碳纳米管(CNT)和石墨烯已被发现具有巨大的潜力，可用于无数的技术创新和应用，如极轻和坚固的织物、化学传感器、电子传感器、燃料电池和药物输送。遗憾的是，由于石墨烯和碳纳米管两种主要的传统模拟方法的局限性，阻碍了它们的迅速和广泛的应用，这两种方法是原子模拟，如经典分子动力学，通常限于小规模计算，以及局部连续介质力学，由于在小尺寸时，单个原子之间的晶格间距变得越来越重要，并且理论无法解释尺度效应，因此其适用性有限。

Claimed to be "wonder material", graphene is a super-strong and transparent form of carbon with one atom thickness which can be used in solar panels and lightweight composites. A carbon nanotube is a cylinder made of graphene. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and graphenes have been discovered to hold great potential for countless technology innovations and applications, such as extremely lightweight and strong fabrics, chemical sensors, electrical sensors, fuel cells, and drug delivery. Unfortunately, their prompt and wide applications are hindered by insufficient understanding of their mechanical behaviour due to limitations of two major traditional approaches for graphene and CNTs modelling: atomistic modelling such as classical molecular dynamics which is usually limited to small scale calculations and local continuum mechanics which have limited applicability due to the fact that at small size the lattice spacing between individual atoms becomes increasingly important and the theory cannot account for the scale effect.