On the canonical equations of Kirchhoff-Love theory of shells

The paper outlines a procedure to derive the canonical system of equations of the classical theory of thin shells using Reissner's variational principle and partial variational principles. The Hamiltonian form of the Reissner functional is obtained using Lagrange multipliers to include the kinematical conditions that follow from the Kirchhoff-Love hypotheses. It is shown that the canonical system of equations can be represented in three different forms: one conventional form (five equilibrium equations) and two forms that are equivalent to it. This can be proved by reducing them to the same system of three equations. For problems with separable active and passive variables, partial variational principles are formulated.