Saint-Venant end effects in the plane problem for linearly elastic functionally graded materials (Q2224454)

The present paper deals with the justification, roughly speaking, of the Saint-Venant's principle for elastic functionally graded materials. The paper is organized as follows. It consists of 5 sections, 3 appendices and references with 40 sources. In Section 1 ``Introduction'', Section 2 ``Problem definition'', and Section 6 ``Discussion'' an ably written informative exploratory survey on topic is given. In Section 3 ``Axial inhomogeneity'' the governing boundary value problem is set and solved. In Section 4 ``Lateral inhomogeneity'', i.e., inhomogeneity in the direction orthogonal to the axial direction of the strip under consideration, is investigated. The effects of an exponential change of Young's modulus and, hence, of the shear modulus, in the axial direction and in the orthogonal to the axial lateral direction, on the decay rate are studied. Moreover, in the first case the end effects are analyzed as well. For the reader's convenience in Appendix A a compatibility equation for the Airy stress function consistent with the inhomogeneous constitutive relation in the case of the plane-stress is derived.