The effect of static load on the vibro-acoustic behaviour of clamped rectangular plates with various geometric imperfections is further investigated in this paper. An effective method applying static load on the plate subjected to dynamic excitations is proposed in the experiment. The Von Karman nonlinear incremental strain-displacement relationship is utilized to describe the large deflection and initial geometric imperfection. Based on the assumed mode method and Hamilton's principle, the nonlinear vibration governing equations of an imperfect plate considering the added effect in the experimental implementation are formulated. Firstly, the nonlinear static deflection is solved iteratively. Then the tangent stiffness matrix is utilized to calculate the linear vibration at the equivalent static position. The acoustic radiation can be derived hereof by Rayleigh integral. The theoretical, numerical and experimental results coincide well. The results show that the natural frequencies of the imperfect plate are higher than those of the original flat one. Under static load, different from the flat plate which is stiffened, the imperfection may lead to either stiffening or softening of the plate depending on the imperfection shape and the static load direction. And the vibro-acoustic characteristics are affected accordingly. It is noted that when the imperfection gets larger, snap-through may occur under static pressure. Furthermore, comparison of vibration characteristics among different load locations with the same static load is also discussed.