The present work aims to study the stress concentration factor (SCF) reduction using different functionally graded materials (FGMs) layer around the circular hole in an infinite homogeneous material panel for different load conditions. Young’s modulu

Purpose: Inverse distance weighted (IDW) functions are utilized to make models of heterogenous materials such as functionally graded materials (FGM) in computer aided design (CAD). However, the use of IDW function based FGM for stress concentration reduction is scarcely available in the literature. The present work aims to analyze and reduce the stress concentration around a circular hole in IDW function-based finite FGM panel under biaxial loading.Design/methodology/approach: Extended finite element method (XFEM) model was prepared using MATLAB to investigate the effect of geometrical and material parameters on the stress concentration factor (SCF). The obtained results of IDW FGM are compared with homogeneous material as well as two different FGMs based on the power-law function.Findings: It was observed that the IDW function based FGM is simple in material modeling, conformal with all domain boundaries and shows lower stress concentration in comparison with the homogeneous material case. While comparing IDW FGM with power-law based FGMs, it was observed that the IDW FGM has least values of stress concentration for low d/W (diameter of the hole to panel width ratio) and is comparable with power-law based FGMs for high d/W.Originality/value: It can be stated that IDW FGM is highly suitable for stress concentration reduction in finite panels with d/W = 0.5, which can further be intended for obtaining optimum hole and panel designs.