A computer-aided interactive system has been developed, which enables to conveniently analyze the thermal stress for multi-layered composites including coating components and functionally gradient materials etc. This system consists of an interactive pre-processor, data bases of material constants, a steady state analysis of heat conduction and thermal stress and a post-processor of calculated results. The thermal stresses are calculated by the analytical method based on strain suppression and beam theory. The analysis can be easily conducted by the selection of menus and the data input acceding to a few commands.
The thermal stress distributions of thermal barrier coating and sixth-layered graded composite are analyzed using the developed system. The calculated results are in good agreement with the calculated results by finite element analysis. Consequently, it is confirmed that the developed system is useful to apply for designing the multi-layered composites.