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.