For calculating the through-thickness profiles, the DC adopts the two conventions used by DISPERSE, as described in the DC (v2.2) manual, p. 11. The first is phase normalization. Since displacement, stress, and strain are complex, the phase of the second point (because the value at the first can be zero sometimes) from the top surface is taken, and the rest of the points is plotted with this phase, but only the real part. This is done for each component u1, u2, u3, sigma11, etc. Energy density and power flow density are integral quantities, so there is no phase to consider. The second convention is power normalization. All components are calculated for guided waves carrying a power of one Watt in the propagation direction x1, with the assumption that the waveguide is one meter wide. Then, when calculating the components at the same number of through-thickness points (samples x3, samples per layer) as DISPERSE, which uses 50 by default, you find very good agreement of the result from DISPERSE and from the DC.

I assume you are using a matlab program for the SAFE method, the SAFE method solves the eigenvalues problem problem by the matlab EIG function (there are other functions to solve the problem) however all matlab functions use amplitude normalization (the function finds all the eigenvectors of the problem and then divides on the largest value which makes all the eigenvectors normalized by amplitude ), so the eigenvectors vary between minus and one. Concerning the DC software Mr. Huber explained the procedure well.