AbstractA simple and accurate non‐layered plastic element which is capable of capturing the development of plastic curvatures across the thickness of the plates is presented in this paper. The influence of transverse shear forces on the plastic behaviour of plates is also investigated here. This non‐layered plastic element is based on: (i) the four‐node quadrilateral strain element for shear flexible elastic plates given by the authors; (ii) the plastic hinge formulation outlined by Shi and Atluri; and (iii) the modified Ilyushin's yield function which can account for both the development of plastic deformations across the thickness of plates and the effect of transverse shear forces. The numerical examples given here demonstrate that the present non‐layered plastic element can achieve the results obtained by the layered element model and the transverse shear forces considerably affect the plastic behaviour of plates under certain load con