Meso‐scale thermo‐magneto‐mechanical constitutive model for magneto‐active elastomers

Abstract

Magneto‐active elastomers (MAE) are one of many emerging smart materials. They have applications in mechanical, civil and biomedical engineering as actuators, such as grippers, and dampers, such as tunable vibration absorbers. MAE consist of a soft polymeric matrix filled with micron‐sized magnetizable particles. Set in a magnetic field, the particles displace, stiffening the entire composite by up to three orders of magnitude.The literature contains myriad purely magneto‐mechanical models for MAE. This contribution introduces a thermal component to enable prediction of heat generation in the composite due to oscillatory, visco‐elastic mechanical deformations. This model, formulated for three‐dimensional finite deformations, is capable of accurately modeling the behavior of incompressible materials through a Q1P0 finite element framework. Numerical simulations qualitatively show the capabilities of this model to describe the fully‐coupled thermo‐magneto‐mechanical response of MAE.