  This paper is devoted to the mechanical buckling analysis of thin composite
plates under straight single-walled carbon nanotubes reinforcement with uniform
distribution and random orientations. In order to develop the fundamental
equations, the B3-Spline finite strip method along with the classical plate
theory is employed and the total potential energy is minimized which leads to
an eigenvalue problem. For deriving the effective modulus of thin composite
plates reinforced with carbon nanotubes, the Mori-Tanaka method is used in
which each straight carbon nanotube is modeled as a fiber with transversely
isotropic elastic properties. The results of our numerical experiments
including the critical buckling loads for rectangular thin composite plates
reinforced by carbon nanotubes with various boundary conditions and different
volume fractions of nanotubes are provided and the positive effect of using
carbon nanotubes reinforcement in mechanical buckling of thin plates is
illustrated.
