The behavior of functionally graded structures has received a great deal of attention in recent years. Usually, these structures are made out of a composite material with a modulus of elasticity, a Poisson’s ratio, and a density that vary through the thickness. The non-uniformity through the thickness introduces coupling between the transverse deformations and the deformations of the mid-surface. Previous publications have shown how to account for these added complexities and have presented extensive results in tabular form. In this article, available results are used to show that the behavior of functionally graded shells is similar to that of homogeneous isotropic shells. It is well known that for isotropic shells, results can be presented in non-dimensional form so that, once results are obtained for one material, they can be simply scaled to obtain the corresponding results for shells made out of another material. The same can then be done for functionally graded shells. In addition, if functionally graded shells behave like homogeneous shells, no new method of analysis is required. The second part of the paper examines why this is true.
Application of the method of caustics to the determination of the ratio of Poisson's ratio to the modulus of elasticity
