  This paper introduces a cost-effective strategy to simulate the behavior of
laminated plates by means of isogeometric 3D solid elements. Exploiting the
high continuity of spline functions and their properties, a proper out-of-plane
stress state is recovered from a coarse displacement solution using a
post-processing step based on the enforcement of equilibrium in strong form.
Appealing results are obtained and the method is shown to be particularly
Peffective on slender composite stacks with a large number of layers.
