Continuum limits of bistable spring models of carbon nanotube arrays   accounting for material damage
  Using chains of bistable springs, a model is derived to investigate the plastic behavior of carbon nanotube arrays with damage. We study the preconditioning effect due to the loading history by computing analytically the stress-strain pattern corresponding to a fatigue-type damage of the structure. We identify the convergence of the discrete response to the limiting case of infinitely many springs, both analytically in the framework of Gamma-convergence, as well as numerically. 
T. Blesgen, F. Fraternali, J.R. Raney, A. Amendola, C. Daraio
math-ph cond-mat.mtrl-sci math.MP