Investigation of magnetoelectric multilayer laminate composites with series and parallel electrical connections

Abstract This paper investigates the performance of magnetoelectric composites composed of multilayer magnetostrictive and piezoelectric laminates in which the series and parallel electrical connections are applied. The multiphysics simulations have been performed according to the different longitudinal and transversal magnetization and polarization modes using a numerical model based on the finite element method and an analytical formulation based on the equivalent circuit model. The obtained results highlight the limitation of the analytical formulation to model the multilayer composites when an alternative opposing polarization between each neighboring piezoelectric layer is applied