Free vibration and buckling of laminated sandwich plate having soft core is studied by using an efficient C0 continuous finite element (FE) model based on higher-order zigzag theory (HOZT). In this theory, the in-plane displacement field for both the face sheets and the core is obtained by superposing a global cubically varying displacement field on a zigzag linearly varying displacement field with a different slope in each layer. The transverse displacement is assumed to be quadratic within the core while it remains constant in the faces beyond the core. The proposed model satisfies the condition of transverse shear stress continuity at the layer interfaces and the zero transverse shear stress condition at the top and bottom of the plate. The nodal field variables are chosen in an efficient manner to overcome the problem of C1 continuity requirement of the transverse displacement. Numerical examples on free vibration and buckling covering different geometric and material features of laminated composite and sandwich plates are presented. Many new results are also presented which should be useful for future research.

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