Here, we consider the free vibration of a tapered beam modeling nonuniform single-walled carbon nanotubes, i.e., nanocones. The beam is clamped at one end and elastically restrained at the other, where a concentrated mass is also located. The equation of motion and relevant boundary conditions are written considering nonlocal effects. To compute the natural frequencies, the differential quadrature method (DQM) is applied. The influence of the small-scale parameter, taper ratio coefficient, and added mass on the first natural frequency is investigated and discussed. Some numerical examples are provided to verify the accuracy and validity of the proposed method, and numerical results are compared to those obtained from exact solution. Since the numerical results are in excellent agreement with the exact solution, we argue that DQM provides a simple and powerful tool that can also be used for the free vibration analysis of carbon nanocones with general boundary conditions for which closed-form solutions are not available in the literature.

The free vibration response of double-walled carbon nanotubes (DWCNTs) is investigated. The DWCNTs are modelled as two beams, interacting between them through the van der Waals forces, and the nonlocal Euler-Bernoulli beam theory is used. The governing equations of motion are derived using a variational approach and the free frequencies of vibrations are obtained employing two different approaches. In the first method, the two double-walled carbon nanotubes are discretized by means of the so-called “cell discretization method” (CDM) in which each nanotube is reduced to a set of rigid bars linked together by elastic cells. The resulting discrete system takes into account nonlocal effects, constraint elasticities, and the van der Waals forces. The second proposed approach, belonging to the semianalytical methods, is an optimized version of the classical Rayleigh quotient, as proposed originally by Schmidt. The resulting conditions are solved numerically. Numerical examples end the paper, in which the two approaches give lower-upper bounds to the true values, and some comparisons with existing results are offered. Comparisons of the present numerical results with those from the open literature show an excellent agreement.

Carbon nanotubes with their outstanding mechanical, physical and electrical properties have stimulated a significant amount of scientific and technological research due to their uniqueness compared to conventional materials. As a result, an extensive study on their mechanical properties has been conducted, and the static and dynamic behavior of single- walled and multi-walled carbon nanotubes has been examined using Euler-Bernoulli and Timoshenko beam models. The main objective of this paper is to study the free vibration behaviour of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) using the nonlocal truncated Timoshenko beam theory. According to the Hamilton principle, the equation of motion of Timoshenko single-walled carbon nanotubes is calculated taking into account the truncated theory; and the general corresponding boundary conditions are derived. Finally, some numerical examples are performed to evaluate the effects of the nonlocal coefficient and the length of the nanotube. The obtained results are validated by comparing them with those found in the literature, and they show the accuracy and efficiency of the developed model. Particularly, the results demonstrate that the present formulation is highly efficient and capable of satisfactorily describing the behavior of nanobeams.