Modeling of Magnetoelectric Effects in Magnetostrictive/Piezoelectric Laminated Composites Using the Energy Method.

The current models of the resonant magnetoelectric (ME) effect are based on Newton’s equation of motion and some given conditions which are various in published papers. Even some results are in conflict with Gauss’s law in magnetics. This paper provides the energy method to model ME effects. The energy method is based on linear constitutive equations and the principle of minimum energy. By constructing and solving the constraint problem of the variational principle, more reasonable conditions are deduced for simplifying Newton’s motion equation. The induced additional fields of externally applied fields are considered during the process of deducing by Gauss’s law for electricity or magnetism. The coefficients of direct/converse ME effects are obtained and compared with the models in the previous papers. The proposed model avoids conflict with Gauss’s law and provides another insight into understanding the resonant and static ME effects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]