Course Intro: Beams, plates and shells are fundamental structural elements in the field of mechanical engineering, civil structures, automobile and aerospace engineering. Therefore analysis of these basic structural elements are required for design and development. This course presents the systematic development of plate governing equations using the variational calculus. Basic analytical solutions techniques are discussed for bending, free vibration and buckling cases. Further, this approach can be applied to develop governing equation and solutions for functionally graded plate, piezoelectric plates (current research topics).