Abstract This paper studies vibration behavior of single-walled carbon nanotubes based on three-dimensional theory of elasticity. To accounting for the size effect of carbon nanotubes, nonlocal theory is adopted to the shell model. The nonlocal parameter is incorporated into all constitutive equations in three dimensions. Governing differential equations of motion are reduced to the ordinary differential equations in thickness direction by using Fourier series expansion in axial and circumferential direction. The state equations obtained from constitutive relations and governing equations are solved analytically by making use of the state space method. A detailed parametric study is carried out to show the influences of the nonlocal parameter, thickness-to-radius ratio and length-to-radius ratio. Results reveal that excluding small-scale effects caused decreasing accuracy of natural frequencies. Furthermore, the obtained closed form solution can be used to assess the accuracy of conventional two-dimensional theories.
