  In this paper we study the best decay rate of the solutions of a damped plate
equation in a square and with a homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions. We
show that the fastest decay rate is given by the supremum of the real part of
the spectrum of the infinitesimal generator of the underlying semigroup, if the
damping coefficient is in $L^\infty(\Omega).$ Moreover, we give some numerical
illustrations by spectral computation of the spectrum associated to the damped
plate equation. The numerical results obtained for various cases of damping are
in a good agreement with theoretical ones. Computation of the spectrum and
energy of discrete solution of damped plate show that the best decay rate is
given by spectral abscissa of numerical solution.
