Abstract
The free vibration and buckling of unsymmetric cross-ply plates, with a variety of boundary conditions, are analyzed by using a refined shear deformation theory used in reference [18]. This theory incorporates tranverse shear deformation and transverse normal stress effects, higher order effects are accounted for and the static conditions on the external bounding planes of the plate are satisfied. The results obtained are compared with their classical and first-order transverse shear deformation counterparts, and with results available in the literature. Excellent agreement is found with simply supported edge-condition results in the literature. Further evidence is provided that classical laminated plate theory over-predicts both the eigenfrequencies and the buckling loads.