This book presents the theory of plates and shells on the basis of the three-dimensional parent theory. The authors explore the thinness of the structure to represent the mechanics of the actual thin three-dimensional body under consideration by a more tractable two-dimensional theory associated with an interior surface. In this way, the relatively complex three-dimensional continuum mechanics of the thin body is replaced by a far more tractable two-dimensional theory. To ensure that the resulting model is predictive, it is necessary to compensate for this ‘dimension reduction’ by...