Gupta, NitantPenev, Evgeni S.Yakobson, Boris I.2022-01-212022-01-212021Gupta, Nitant, Penev, Evgeni S. and Yakobson, Boris I.. "Fatigue in assemblies of indefatigable carbon nanotubes." <i>Science Advances,</i> 7, no. 52 (2021) AAAS: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abj6996.https://hdl.handle.net/1911/111941Despite being one of the most consequential processes in the utilization of structural materials, fatigue at the nano- and mesoscale has been marginally explored or understood even for the most promising nanocarbon forms—nanotubes and graphene. By combining atomistic models with kinetic Monte Carlo simulations, we show 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. In contrast, by using coarse-grained modeling, we demonstrate 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.engThis is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.Journal articlesciadv-abj6996https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abj6996