Free Vibration Studies Of Magneto-electro-elastic Structures Using EAS & ANS Solid-shell Finite Elements

Magneto-electro-elastic materials are novel materials. These smart composite materials exhibit a desirable coupling effect between elastic, electric and magnetic fields, which are useful in smart or intelligent structure applications. These materials have the capacity to convert one form of energy, viz., magnetic, electric and mechanical energy to another form of energy. For engineering structures, boundary conditions are too complex to get analytic solution and it is necessary and valuable to obtain numerical solution. In this article, a new 8-node solid-shell finite element model is formulated by assumed natural strain, enhanced assumed strain method and using displacement components, electric potential and magnetic potentials as nodal degree of freedom. This element can be used as solid element and can also be used to model thin curved shell structures. Even for a thin plate/shell with very small thickness to length ratio, the predictions of this element are satisfactory. In the paper, the free vibration behaviour of multiphase, layered and function graded magneto-electro-elastic structures are carried out by the new finite element model. The effects of material parameters, constituent volume fraction of piezoelectric phase and the power law index of function graded magneto-electro-elastic material on the free vibration behaviour of magneto-electro-elastic structures are demonstrated in detail. The numerical examples demonstrate that the present element model is robust and reliable.