Spinnable carbon nanotubes enable us to produce carbon nanotube assemblies such as yarn and sheet without binder. Untwisted carbon nanotube yarn is one of the assemblies. Untwisted carbon nanotube yarns are composed of unidirectionally aligned carbon nanotubes along with the yarn axis, and thus untwisted carbon nanotube yarns are an ideal preform for composite fabrication with high mechanical performance. In this study, untwisted carbon nanotube yarns with varied densities were prepared by using spinnable carbon nanotube forests, and the tensile properties were examined. Furthermore, an analytical model of tensile properties for untwisted carbon nanotube yarns were proposed based on the shear-lag model. The proposed model can predict the tensile behavior of an untwisted yarn from the tensile modulus and strength of a carbon nanotube, the volume packing fraction of carbon nanotubes for the untwisted yarn, and shear stress exerted on the slipped region of a carbon nanotube. Then, the proposed model was applied to estimate the elastic modulus and tensile strength of a carbon nanotube from the tensile properties of untwisted carbon nanotube yarns. In our case, the estimated tensile elastic modulus of a carbon nanotube was about 200 GPa, and the estimated tensile strength of a carbon nanotube was about 1.9 GPa.
