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The Pasternak elastic foundation model is employed to study the statics and natural frequencies of thick plates in the framework of the finite element method. A new 16-node Mindlin plate element of the Lagrange family and a 32-node zero-thickness interface element representing the response of the foundation are used in the analysis. The plate element avoids ill-conditioned behaviour due to its small thickness. In the case of the eigenvalue analysis, the equation of motion is derived by applying the Hamilton principle involving the variation of the kinetic and potential energy of the plate and foundation. Regarding the plate, the first- order shear deformation theory is used. By employing the Lobatto numerical integration in which the integration points coincide with the element nodes, we obtain the diagonal form of the mass matrix of the plate. In practice, diagonal mass matrices are often employed due to their very attractive time- integration schemes in explicit dynamic methods in which the inversion of the effective stiffness matrix as a linear combination of the damping and mass matrices is required. The numerical results of our analysis are verified using thin element based on the classical Kirchhoff theory and 16-node thick plate elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]