Resistance to bending adds a restoring contribution that grows more rapidly with spatial curvature than the tension contribution. Short-wavelength modes are therefore stiffened especially strongly, raising their frequencies and changing the large-wavenumber behaviour.
For example, a thin plate of flexural rigidity has . When its edge conditions admit the same sine transverse mode, bending stiffness in a membrane waveguide gives
Thus the cutoffs increase, and bending-dominated propagation has at large , rather than approaching . Its phase velocity and group velocity then grow with . If “rigidly fixed” means a genuinely clamped plate edge, the slope must also vanish and the mode shapes change; the qualitative stiffening and stronger wave dispersion remain, but simple need not remain exact.