SciTech  Daily December 29, 2021 By combining atomistic models with kinetic Monte Carlo simulations, researchers at Rice University have shown that a pristine carbon nanotube under ambient working conditions is essentially indefatigable accumulating no structural memory of prior load; over time, it probabilistically breaks, abruptly. However, by using coarse-grained modeling they demonstrated that any practical assemblies of nanotubes, e.g., bundles and fibers, display a clear gradual strength degradation in cyclic tensile loading due to recurrence and ratchet-up of slip at the tube-tube interfaces, not occurring under static load even of equal amplitude. They hope to give researchers and industry a […]