When a plate of magnetically soft material is supported with its wide surface normal to a uniform magnetic field, it will buckle when the field reaches a critical value. This paper formulates the problem quite generally for thin plates (including beams) and carries the solution as far as can be done without making specific assumptions as to plate geometry and constraints. The special case of wide cantilever beam, considered earlier by Moon and Pao, is carried through in detail. It is shown that if their theoretical result is modified to take account of the increased field intensity caused by the plate, agreement with experiment is within 20 percent.
