The present work deals with thermal buckling of trapezoidal composite plates with embedded shape memory alloy (SMA) wires. In order to estimate the thermomechanical behavior of SMAs, Brinson's model is applied. The thermal buckling equations are derived based on first‐order shear deformation theory, and then solved by means of two‐dimensional generalized differential quadrature method. A parametric study is performed to demonstrate the influence of some parameters such as volume fraction and pre‐strain of SMA wires, the geometric properties, lay‐up configuration, as well as boundary conditions on the critical buckling temperature of trapezoidal composite plates. Numerical results state that the positive effects of SMA wires are restricted to a limited range of thickness and temperature. Results also show that SMA wires can play a destructive role in the thermal buckling behavior of trapezoidal plates, depending on the geometry of the structure, stacking sequence of layers, and boundary conditions.

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