Tappet plates are necessary for the loading of bb's into your hop up chamber. Its function is to be pulled back under spring tension and released forward, pushing a bb into your hop up bucking. Without a working tappet plate your AEG will not feed bb's rendering your AEG useless.
Me rambling on here won’t help explain this any better than this GIF would so have a look below.
This GIF is a AEG completing a single shot. as the sector gear spins there is a post that pulls back the tappet plate under spring tension. When this happens the spring tension in your magazine pushes up on your bb's and places a single round right in front of your nozzle. (which is attached to the front of your tappet plate) once a bb is placed inside your bucking the compression cycle of your cylinder/piston is completed, piston slams forward in the cylinder, air pressure is built behind the bb propelling it out of your barrel. And then the cycle is repeated for every shot.
tappet plates are usually made out a plastic/nylon/fiber material and dont normally wear out or break. It is of course something to keep your eye on and make sure there are no cracks or signs of wear. For example my M4 is 3 ish years old and has more than 100,000 rounds through it and im still using the stock tappet plate.... no joke.