Elastic buckling of single-walled carbon nanotube ropes under high pressure

A modified elastic honeycomb model is presented to study elastic buckling o f single-walled carbon nanotube ropes under high pressure. Simple formula i s given for the critical pressure as a function of the Young's modulus and the thickness-to-radius ratio. For single-walled carbon nanotubes of diamet ers around 1.3 nm, the predicted critical pressure is about 1.8 GPa, which is in excellent agreement with the known data reported in the literature. T his suggests that the elastic buckling would be responsible for the pressur e-induced abnormalities observed for vibration modes and electric resistivi ty of single-walled carbon nanotube ropes.