DECAY OF STRESSES INDUCED BY SELF-EQUILIBRATED END LOADS IN A MULTILAYERED COMPOSITE

The axial decay of stresses induced by self-equilibrated end loads in a multilayered composite is investigated in the context of the plane p roblem. Here the multilayered composite is composed of alternating lay ers of two dissimilar isotropic materials. By adopting appropriate bou ndary conditions it is sufficient to consider a cell which consists of three layers. An Airy stress function approach is utilized to obtain the characteristic equation where the non-zero roots correspond to the decay rates. The dominant exponential decay rate, which corresponds t o the smallest positive real part of the roots is presented in the Dun durs alpha, beta parallelogram.