Abstract: An experimental investigation of the stability of rectangular carbon/epoxy composite laminated plates simply supported under uniaxial compression is presented.The specimens are made of four kinds of cardon/epoxy laminates and one aluminum specimen is used to check the experi-mental plan, The critical buckling loads of the plates are determined by three methods load-shortening (p-Δ),load-strain (p-ε) and load-deflection (p-f) curves.