This paper deals with buckling, free vibration and damping analysis of viscoelastic sandwich beam with constrained magnetostrictive layer. Eight node plane stress element is used for the analysis. The influence of viscoelastic core thickness and magnetostrictive layer thickness on the buckling and dynamic analysis of sandwich beam under magnetic environment is analyzed by considering the initial stresses due to uniform magnetic field. The validation is carried out using commercial package ANSYS 8.1, based on the thermal analogy concept given by Cote et al. [Dynamic and static modeling of piezoelectric composite structures using a thermal analogy with MSC/NASTRAN, Compos. Struct. 65 (2004) 471-484]. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.