Predicting effective magneto striction and moduli of magneto strictive composites by using the double-inclusion method

The most important properties of magnetostrictive composites are the effective magnetostriction and effective elastic moduli. In this paper, an attempt was made to predict the effective properties of magnetostrictive composites consisting of magnetostrictive particles dispersed in a non-magnetostrictive matrix. This was done by extending the double-inclusion model to deal with magnetoelastic problems. It has been shown that the magnetostriction of magnetostrictive composites depends not only on the volume fraction and material properties, but also on the shape and orientation of the ellipsoidal inhomogeneities and the common magnetostriction constants of the cubic microcrystallite. The analytical results have been compared with the existing experimental results to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed double-inclusion model. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.