This paper illustrates an innovative approach to obtain an analytical model for elastic, multilayer, anisotropic, and moderately thick plates. The goals of the proposed approach are (i) provide an accurate stress description, (ii) take into account the effects of material anisotropies and inhomogeneities, and (iii) lead to a plate model that does not need shear correction factors. The first step of the modeling procedure is the weak formulation of the 3D elastic problem. In particular, we choose the Hellinger–Reissner functional expressed in a way that privileges an accurate description of stress field. The second step consists of the reduction of the 3D elastic problem weak formulation to a 2D weak formulation (i.e. the properly called plate-theory) using the dimension reduction method. Finally, the third step allows to obtain the plate-theory strong formulation. We evaluate some analytical solutions of the obtained plate-theory and we compare them with Classical Plate Theory, First order Shear Deformation Theory, and Elasticity Theory solutions with the aim to evaluate the proposed method accuracy. The results highlight the following main advantages: needless of shear correction factors and accurate description of both stress and displacement fields also in complex situations, like multilayer, anisotropic, and moderately thick plates.
