Abstract: In view of the thermo-acoustic fatigue of aerospace thin-walled structures, the characteristics of the nonlinear dynamic response of thin-walled plates are investigated with the analytical method combined with the FEM numerical method. Firstly, the partial differential equations of motion for the nonlinear large deflection are derived for the simply-supported rectangular plate, and they are transformed into second order differential equations in modal coordinates using the Galerkin method. With the simplified equations of single degree of freedom, the influences of the surface temperature and the temperature gradient on the vibration response of the rectangular plate are calculated and analyzed. Secondly, with the FEM, the modal frequencies of the simply-supported rectangular plate at different temperatures, the vibration displacement and stress under the constant sound pressure level and different temperatures are calculated, and the displacement power spectrum density is analyzed. Based on the calculated results, the relationship between the fundamental response frequencies and the temperatures is analyzed, furthermore, the buckling and the snap-through response characteristics are discussed as well.