The main objective of the current study is to improve the structural resilience and damage control of steel plate shear walls (SPSWs) equipped with a unique passive visco-plastic damper. The proposed damper is made of a high-damping rubber layer with self-centering characteristics and ductile steel bolts. The seismic response of the novel SPSW system equipped with the aforementioned visco-plastic damper is evaluated using a threedimensional nonlinear finite element analysis validated with experimental data. Furthermore, a parametric study is conducted to see the effect of different parameters such as the bolt diameter-to-height ratio, rubber thickness, number of bolts, number of dampers, location of the damper connection, and bolt material on the behavior of SPSW equipped with visco-plastic dampers under cyclic loading. Results showed that the suggested damper could concentrate most of the damages merely in itself and preserve the primary structural components in the undamaged elastic range, which acted as a structural fuse. The results indicated that to obtain the research objective, the bolt diameter-to-height ratio needs to be 0.2 or less, which in this case, more than 85% of the total input energy is absorbed by merely the damper and steel boundary columns and beam remained elastic and undamaged, while the infill plate had a relatively low energy absorption rate of roughly 10%. On the contrary, the infill plate of the conventional SPSW absorbed the highest energy, accounting for more than 75% of the total input energy. The beam also had a relatively high energy absorption rate of around 24%. In addition, the selfcentering behavior of the proposed system could reduce nearly 36% of the residual lateral displacement compared with the conventional SPSW.
