Free vibration analysis of nanotube based sensors including rotary inertia based on the Rayleigh beam and modified couple stress theories

Abstract

In this study, a finite element formulation is presented to analyze the free vibration of carbon nanotube based sensor in conjunction with modified couple stress and Rayleigh beam theories. Rotary inertia effect and size dependency are considered for vibration problem of the cantilever single walled carbon nanotube. The aim of this paper is to examine the vibrational frequencies of single-walled carbon nanotube with these effects. Therefore, for the finite element solution, stiffness and mass matrices have been obtained that include these effects in the calculations. Numerical results are presented to show the variation of the frequencies with a variety of parameters such as the material length scale parameter, number of the finite elements, length of the nanotube and mode number.