Effective moduli of multiferroic fibrous composites with strain gradient and electromagnetic field gradient effects

Abstract

This paper studies the effective moduli of multiferroic fibrous composites with strain gradient and electromagnetic field gradient effects subjected to generalized anti-plane shear deformation. Using the energy variational formulation and the generalized self-consistent method, we can determine the effective moduli of the heterogeneous material. The derived solutions are then applied to a BaTiO3–CoFe2O4 composite to demonstrate the effect of strain gradient, electric field gradient, and magnetic field gradient. Numerical results show that the gradient effects have significant influence on the effective moduli of the multiferroic composite. We show that the magnetoelectric voltage coefficient, the figure of merit of the multiferroic material, can be enhanced many-fold than that of the classical solution. In addition, most of the effective moduli increase as the radius of the fiber decreases (or equivalently the characteristic length increases).