We have decided to discontinue the publication of preprints on our preprint server end of 2024. The publication culture within mathematics has changed so much due to the rise of repositories such as ArXiV (www.arxiv.org) that we are encouraging all institute members to make their preprints available there. An institute's repository in its previous form is, therefore, unnecessary. The preprints published to date will remain available here, but we will not add any new preprints here.
We introduce a natural concept of stationarity for the nonlinear bending theory of elastic plates, and we derive the equilibrium equations satisfied by stationary points. A key ingredient is a geometric result about the continuation of infinitesimal bendings on developable surfaces.