Abstract: To realize industrialization in residence building， the lateral resisting system must be prefabricated． The steel plate shear wall was one of the selections． Two 1∶ 3 scaled models of steel plate shear walls with horizontal stiffener were tested with monotonic load and low cyclic load respectively． The deformation performance of steel plate shear wall was investigated，and the hysteretic behavior，stiffness degradation，ductility and energy dissipation of the stiffened steel plate shear walls were analyzed． Test results show that the specimens presented high initial stiffness，good energy dissipation capacity and good ductility with the ductility factor greater than 3 and slow degradation of the load-carrying capacity． The elastic-plastic analysis should be used to research on threshold stiffness of tranverse stiffener．