Our group works on a novel approach for the FE analysis of fiber-reinforced composites, which can provide accurate stress and strain fields with minimum computational costs using 1D refined theories. The structural models are derived in the framework of the Carrera Unified Formulation (CUF), which provides hierarchical higher-order structural models with arbitrary expansion orders where the order of the unknown variables over the cross-section is a free parameter of the formulation. Taylor- and Lagrange-type polynomials are used to interpolate the displacement field over the element cross-section. The 1D CUF formulation is exploited to develop respectively, both concurrent and hierarchical multi-scale approaches.