The thermoelastic effect has been used to study stress distributions in a n
umber of in-plane loading problems. Analysis of the temperature distributio
n has been largely limited to isotropic one-dimensional approximations with
heat transfer through the thickness of the specimen. In sonic fatigue, spe
cimens undergo fully reversed bending with a stress gradient along the leng
th of the specimen as well as through the thickness. This has also been mod
eled as a one-dimensional heat transfer problem with negligible heat transf
er along the specimen length. The authors solve this as a two-dimensional p
roblem for an isotropic material to determine the effect of heat transfer.