AbstractThis work presents a metamodel strategy to approximate the buckling load response of laminated composite plates. In order to obtain representative data for training the metamodel, some laminates with different stacking sequences are generated using the Latin hypercube sampling plan. These stacking sequences are converted into lamination parameters so that the number of inputs of the metamodel becomes constant. The buckling load for each laminate of the training set are computed using finite elements. In this way the inputs-outputs metamodel training pairs are the lamination parameters and the corresponding bucking load. Neural network and support vector regression metamodels are employed to approximate the buckling load. The performances of the metamodels are compared in a test case and the results are shown and discussed.