Critical buckling temperature of laminated plate under thermal load varied linearly along the thickness, is developed using a higher-order shape function which depends on a parameter ‘‘m’’, which is improved to obtain results for thin and thick plates. Laminated plates’ equations of motion are obtained using virtual work principle and solved for simply supported boundary conditions. Angle and cross laminates thermal buckled mode shapes with different E1/E2 proportion, number of plies, (α2/α1) proportion, aspect ratios, are investigated. It is observed that this shape function gives thermal buckling for thin and thick plates but with m = 0.05 that agree well with other theories and linear distribution of temperature gives a rise to critical temperature approach to 50% than those caused by uniform thermal distribution.
