Composite structures are widely employed in engineering applications for increasing the structural weight efficiency. These deserve dedicated modeling strategies that consider their multi-scale heterogeneity and anisotropy. It is well known that structural models (beams, plates and shells) can accurately grasp the global and local response, provided their formulation is adapted to the intended analysis and to the considered problem (geometry, loading…). The present work discusses the variable kinematics approach as an axiomatic modeling tool for constructing arbitrary models, thus allowing to adapt the model assumptions in order to obtain the most accurate result without excess of model parameters. In order to improve the accuracy of the transverse stresses, Reissner’s mixed approach RMVT is considered in addition to the classical displacement-based approaches. After reviewing the variable kinematics models available in literature, the Sublaminate Generalised Unified Formulation (SGUF) is presented as a particularly attractive framework for an efficient modeling of sandwich structures. The formulation is extended to multifield problems with reference to the weak thermo-mechanical coupling and the strong piezo-electric coupling. The presentation is limited to plate geometries. Besides the classical quasi-analytical Navier-type solution, numerical solution methods (Ritz and Finite Element Method) are considered for solving the 2D governing equations: particular emphasis is then given to the formulation of numerical models that assure a good convergence rate, i.e., to the absence of numerical pathologies in order enhance the efficiency of the computational model. Results issued from the works already published by the author are exemplarily shown and discussed.