Abstract: The present article researches several problems about the lateral instability, of cantilever plates by means of the energy method, in which we discuss the minimum critical load of cantilever rectangular plates under a concentrated force, a uniformly distributed load, a distributed load in triangular form and a concentrated couple, respectively, when the lateral buckling takes place.

Key words: characteristic analysis, wave surface, fluid-saturated porous medium, transversely isotropic, stress wave