Finite element simulation of magnetostrictive and piezoelectric coupling in a layered structure

In general, piezoelectric materials are employed as the sources that provide stress coupled electric polarization, while piezomagnetic [1] or magnetostrictive [2??4] materials are used as the sources that provide strain coupled magnetization in magnetoelectric composites. Computer models of ME efficiency are often constructed based on the coupling of piezoelectric and effective piezomagnetic properties. While in fact, the form of piezoelectric/magnetostrictive composite has been most commonly used, and dramatic strain as large as 10??3 (TbDyF2) has been widely reported for magnetostrictive materials. An ideal magnetostrictive material does not show hysteresis behavior, which makes it easy to be controlled when coupled with piezoelectric materials. Furthermore, it is a fourth rank tensor property, which does not contain axial handedness problem [5]. In this approach, a model is constructed to couple fourth rank magnetostriction with piezoelectric in composite form to evaluate the ME efficiency for such materials.