Magneto-electro-elastic coated inclusion problem and its application to magnetic-piezoelectric composite materials

In this work, a micromechanical model for the estimate of the magneto-electro-elastic behavior of the magnetic-piezoelectric composites with coated reinforcements is proposed. The coating is considered as a thin layer with properties different from those of the inclusion and the matrix. The micromechanical approach based on the Green’s functions techniques and on the interfacial operators is designed for solving the magneto-electro-elastic inhomogeneous coated inclusion problem. The effective magneto-electro-elastic properties of the composite containing thinly coated inclusions are obtained through the Mori–Tanaka’s model. Numerical investigations into magneto-electro-elastic moduli responsible for the magneto-electric coupling are presented as functions of the volume fraction and characteristics of the coated inclusions. Comparisons with existing models are presented for various shape and orientation of the coated inclusions.