Micromechanical modeling of the multiphysical behavior of smart materials using the variational asymptotic method

A multiphysics micromechanics model is developed to predict the effective properties as well as the local fields of periodic smart materials responsive to fully coupled electric, magnetic, thermal and mechanical fields. This work is based on the framework of the variational asymptotic method for unit cell homogenization (VAMUCH), a recently developed micromechanics modeling scheme. To treat the general microstructure of smart materials, we implemented this model using the finite element technique. Several examples of smart materials are used to demonstrate the application of the proposed model for prediction of multiphysical behavior.