Analysis of elastic layers with dilative eigenstrains varying through the thickness

Elastic layers with varying dilative eigenstrains through the thickness were concerned. A general procedure was proposed for the analysis of such layers under arbitrary loads. The study is based on the state-space method and an asymptotic expansion technique. When the external loads are uniform, the expansion terminates after some leading terms, and an explicit representation for the mechanical field in a layer is obtained. This representation relies only on the displacement components of the mid-plane, which are governed by a set of two-dimensional differential equations similar to those in the classical plate theory. Consequently, obtaining the solution to the two-dimensional equations immediately gives the three-dimensional responses of the layer. As an illustrative example, a clamped elliptical layer under a uniformly distributed transverse load is analyzed in detail.