Quantification of Saint-Venant's Principle for a General Prismatic Member

A semi-analytic finite element method for finding the decay rates of edge effects in anisotropic layered plates was extended to the treatment of prismatic members of an arbitrary cross section composed of any number of anisotropic elements. The displacement fields corresponding to the decay rates with positive real part were determined for a homogenous graphite/epoxy plate two units thick. The behavior of a rectangular beam is also considered.