The multi-physical cell-based smoothed finite element method for analyzing transient behavior of functionally grade magneto-electro-elastic thin-walled structures under thermal environment

Abstract

Abstract This study, the coupled multi-physical cell-based smoothed finite element method (CS-FEM) was proposed to predict the temperature environment combining mechanical load effect on the dynamic characteristics of functionally grade magneto-electro-elastic (FG-MEE) thin-walled intelligent structures. Consider the coupling effects among elastic, electric, magnetic and thermal fields, and this method possesses higher accuracy, lower mesh restriction, much less computational cost and stronger handling ability when encountering strong mesh distortion and large deformation issues compared with standard FEM. The accuracy, convergence and efficiency of CS-FEM were validated via three numerical examples. Proposed CS-FEM integrating the modified Newmark scheme explored the thermal effect on generalized displacements (x- and z-direction displacement components, electric and magnetic potential) of FG-MEE based sensors. Further, parametric studies were carried out to analyze the index factor impact on thin-walled structure performances. This study presents an effective approach to investigate the coupled multi-physical problem, and the simulation results are definitely useful for the designation of intelligence thin-walled structures in service under complex load condition.