Abstract

This study is concerned with the thermal vibration analysis of a short single-walled carbon nanotube embedded in an elastic medium based on nonlocal Timoshenko beam model. A Winkler- and Pasternak-type elastic foundation is employed to model the interaction of short carbon nanotubes and the surrounding elastic medium. Influence of all parameters such as nonlocal small-scale effects, high temperature change, Winkler modulus parameter, Pasternak shear parameter, vibration mode and aspect ratio of short carbon nanotubes on the vibration frequency are analyzed and discussed. The present study shows that for high temperature changes, the effect of Winkler constant in different nonlocal parameters on nonlocal frequency is negligible. Furthermore, for all temperatures, the nonlocal frequencies are always smaller than the local frequencies in short carbon nanotubes. In addition, for high Pasternak modulus, by increasing the aspect ratio, the nonlocal frequency decreases. It is concluded that short carbon nanotubes have the higher frequencies as compared with long carbon nanotubes.