Cyclohexane, axial bonds twist-boat conformation

On each carbon, one bond is directed up or down and the other more or less in the plane of the ring. The up or down bonds are called axial and the others equatorial. The axial bonds point alternately up and down. If a molecule were frozen into a chair form, there would be isomerism in monosubstituted cyclohexanes. For example, there would be an equatorial methylcyclohexane and an axial isomer. However, it has never been possible to isolate isomers of this type at room temperature.219 This proves the transient existence of the boat or twist form, since in order for the two types of methylcyclohexane to be non-separable, there must be rapid interconversion of one chair form to another (in which all axial bonds become equatorial and vice versa) and this is possible only through a boat or twist conformation. Conversion of one chair form to another requires an activation energy of about 10 kcal/mol (42 kJ/mol)220 and is very rapid at room temperature.221 However, by... 

The value of q3 = (6) V2R (R is the CC bond length) is 0.63 A. Under pseudorotation the equatorial boat-shaped structures B (0 = 90°, = 0, 60°, 120°,.. . ) turn into a twist-boat structure TB (0 = 90°, = 30°, 90°,.. . ). The transitions between the chair and twist boat structures involve the intermediate formation of half boat (HB) and half chair (HC) structures. Quantum chemical calculations carried out by Dixon and Komornicki [1990] show that the axial structure C with symmetry D3d is stable. The energies of structures B and TB are 7.9 and 6.8kcal/mol higher than C. The barrier for transition from C to TB is 12.2-12.4 kcal/ mol. Because of the high barriers for pseudorotation, only thermally activated conformational transitions occur in cyclohexane. 

For cyclohexane, the two equivalent chair conformations can interconvert by one chair twisting first into a boat and then into the other chair. When one chair is converted to the other, a change occurs in the relative orientations in space of the hydrogen atoms bonded to each carbon All hydrogen atoms equatorial in one chair become axial in the other, and vice versa (Figure 3.10). The interconversion of one chair conformation of cyclohexane to the other occurs rapidly at room temperature. 

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