Analytical solution of a bilayer functionally graded cantilever beam with concentrated loads

A general two-dimensional solution for a bilayer functionally graded cantilever beam with concentrated loads at the free end is developed. The beam is treated as a nonhomogeneous plane stress problem, and the elastic modulus of each graded layer varies with the thickness as an arbitrary function, respectively, which makes this analytical solution has a wider application than the solutions only considering FGMs as core materials or modeling the face sheets by Euler beam theory. It can be verified the paper’s close solution coincides with the classical one for beams while let the elastic modulus be constants. The methodology presented here could be easily extended to analyze the functionally graded sandwich beams.