AbstractIn his delightful and original textbook,18Bruce Irons introduces the chapter of plate bending with the remark ‘History of disasters, but the pioneering days are past’. This is certainly true. On the other hand, we learn in the same context from Irons: ‘We believe that the world has not yet exhausted the older formulations.’ In this paper we present a review of theoretical aspects of the plate‐bending triangle TRUNC (Reference 4), together with extensive tests in linear statics, dynamics, buckling and nonlinear large deformations both for plates and shells. The unconventional TRUNC model is based on the patch test, which was originated by Irons.1In spite of its limited theoretical foundation, the performance of this element on a fairly broad field of applications appears at least from the practical point of view very sat