A new derivation of the general equations of elastic shells

Abstract This paper is concerned with a new derivation of the general equations of the linear theory of elastic shells under the Kirchhoff-Love hypothesis. The entire boundary-value problem of shell theory is recast in terms of new variables for the strain measures as well as the stress and couple resultants. Particular attention is paid to an exact derivation of the constitutive equations and their first approximations which meet all invariance requirements. The natural boundary conditions for stress and couple resultants and all field equations consisting of compatibility, equilibrium and the constitutive equations (or their first approximations) involve only symmetric tensors and are, moreover, remarkably free of the anti-symmetric parts of both the middle surface strains and the couple resultants.