Institute of Fundamental Technological Research

The size-dependent buckling problem of cracked micro- and nanocantilevers, which have many applications as sensors and actuators, is studied by the stress-driven nonlocal theory of elasticity and Bernoulli–Euler beam model. The presence of the crack is modeled by assuming that the sections at the left and right sides of the crack are connected by a rotational spring. The compliance of the spring, which relates the slope discontinuity and the bending moment at the cracked cross section, is related to the crack length using the method of energy consideration and the theory of fracture mechanics. The buckling equations of the left and right sections are solved separately, and the variationally consistent and constitutive boundary and continuity conditions are imposed to close the problem. Novel insightful results are presented about the effects of the crack length and location, and the nonlocality on the critical loads and mode shapes, also for higher modes of buckling. The results of the present model converge to those of the intact nanocantilevers when the crack length goes to zero and to those of the large-scale cracked cantilever beams when the nonlocal parameter vanishes.