Nonlinear stress-strain behavior of carbon nanotube fibers subject to slow sustained strain rate

Abstract

Nonlinear stress-strain behavior of carbon nanotube (CNT) fibers is studied based on the test data where fiber strength can be modeled by the Weibull distribution. CNT fibers spun from vertically aligned arrays are tensioned at slow sustained strain rate (0.00001 1/s) to study the tensile strength resulting from sliding-to-failure effects. A model is developed to estimate the Weibull modulus which characterizes the dispersion of fiber strengths in terms of the maximum sustained stress and failure strain of the fibers. The results show that the sliding indeed has great influence on the stress-strain relation of CNT fibers at low strain rate.