Functionally graded materials (FGM) have recently attracted great attention since it is possible with these materials to obtain a combination of properties which cannot be avhieved in conventional monolitic materials. In FGM this is obtained by varying the composition from one side of the material to the other, either continuously or stepwise as in multilayered materials. One of the problems afterwards is to characterise the relevant properties and minimize the residual stresses of these FGM. Ideally, a model can be developed to calculate therelevant properties from the microstructure and another one (mesoscale model) to calculate the energy release rate at the interfaces of the multilayers from these relevant properties.
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