It is very important to well understand the dynamic characteristics of damaged structures to successfully develop or to choose a most appropriate structural damage identification method (SDIM) as the means of non-destructive testing. In this pope., the dynamic equation of motion for damaged plates is derived by introducing a damage distribution function, which may characterize the effective state of structural damages. It is found that structural damages may induce the coupling between modal coordinates. The effects of damages on the vibration characteristics of a plate depending on their locations, sizes, and magnitudes are numerically investigated in a systematic way. The numerical investigations are also given to the effects of damage-induced modal coupling on the changes in vibration characteristics and to the minimum number of natural modes required to predict sufficiently accurate vibration characteristics of damaged plates.