Buckling of a Graphene Sheet Perpendicular to a Rigid Substrate
J. Patrick Wilber (University of Akron), Dmitry Golovaty (University of Akron), Shawn Ryan ([email protected])
Synthesis, Characterization, and Modeling of Low-Dimensional Nanomaterials
Tue 10:45 - 12:15
Salomon 202
We develop a continuum model that describes the elastic bending of a graphene sheet interacting with a rigid substrate by van der Waals forces. This model is used to formulate a buckling problem in which the sheet is perpendicular to the substrate and a load is applied to the edge of the sheet further from the substrate. After identifying a trivial branch, we combine computation and analysis to determine the stability and bifurcations of solutions along this branch. We also study the boundary-layer problem that arises if the length of the sheet is large compared to the characteristic length over which the van der Waals interaction is significant.