Magnetoelectric effect in coated fibrous magnetic–piezoelectric composites

In this study, the magnetoelectroelastic behavior is investigated for magnetic–piezoelectric composites with coated reinforcements under antiplane mechanical and in-plane electromagnetic loads. The coating is considered as a layer with properties different from those of the inclusion and the matrix. The developed model is based on the solution of the problem of the magnetoelectroelastic coated inclusion embedded in an infinite homogeneous medium obtained from two different approaches. The first is the complex variable method integrating the Laurent expansion method, and the second is a micromechanical approach based simultaneously on Green’s function techniques and the interfacial operators. The exact solution is obtained and used as background to determine the effective magnetoelectroelastic properties of the composite containing thinly coated inclusions embedded in a matrix through Mori–Tanaka’s model. Numerical investigations into magnetoelectroelastic moduli responsible for the magnetoelectric effect are presented as functions of the volume fraction and characteristics of the coated inclusions. Comparisons with existing models are presented for various fractions of the coated inclusions.