An efficient finite element method has been introduced for analysis of metallic sandwich plates subject to bending moment. A full model 3-point bending FE-analysis shows that the plastic behavior of inner structures appears only at the load point. The unit structures of sandwich plates are defined to numerically calculate the bending stiffness and strength utilizing the recurrent boundary condition for pure bending analysis. The equivalent models with the same bending stiffness and strength of full models are then designed analytically. It is demonstrated that the results of both models are almost the same and the FE-analysis method incorporating the equivalent models can reduce the computation time effectively. The dominant collapse modes are face buckling and face yielding. Since the inner dimpled structures prevent face buckling, sandwich plates with inner dimpled shell structure can absorb more energy than other types of sandwich plates during the bending behavior.