Surface or submerged horizontal or vertical plate can be considered as a new concept breakwater. This paper investigates the wave-plate interaction of this type of breakwater by use of the boundary element method. The relationships of wave transmitted and reflected among plate thickness, submergence and length are carefully studied by numerical simulation. It is shown that: (1) The transmitted coefficients of submerged horizontal plate or vertical plate will become larger with the increase of plate thickness and reduce rapidly with the decrease of plate submergence. (2) Both surface horizontal and vertical plate are efficient for intermediate and short wave elimination, but vertical plate is more effective. (3)Submerged horizontal plate can act more effectively than submerged vertical plate does. With all wave frequencies, the vertical plate almost has no wave elimination effect.