During the last ten years a considerable volume of inform ation has been accumulated regarding the inelastic behaviour of materials. The increasing number of communications published in specialised journals and also the frequency of meetings in these fields, indicates a considerable research effort aimed at such topics as plasticity, creep, fatigue, visco-plasticity and the like. This fact encouraged a group of Brazilian researchers, stimulated enthusiastically by Professor P. Germain, to submit a proposal for a Symposium on the "Inelastic Behaviour of Plates and Shells" to the General...