Cylindrical bending of a composite plate, constructed of both orthotro
pic and isotropic thermoelastic layers in combination with orthorhombi
c piezoelectric layers, is studied in this paper. A recently derived e
xact analytical formulation is employed to obtain a benchmark solution
for the case of thermal and electric-potential surface loadings. A hi
gh-order plane-strain analysis that accounts for transverse normal and
shear deformation is also presented. Comparison is made of the displa
cement and stress distributions found using the high-order and classic
al bending theories with the piezothermoelasticity results. (C) 1998 E
lsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.