Bending of inhomogeneous curved bars

The stress distribution across an inhomogeneous circular beam subjected to pure bending is considered. In previous treatments the spatial variation of the elastic stiffness has been modeled by a power law and here a slight generalization for the form of the elastic stiffness is given. It is shown that the standard curved beam approximation exhibits excellent agreement with the exact results. A method of engineering the stiffness gradient to produce a specified stress profile is presented.