[en] A new type of earthquake-resisting element that consists of a steel plate shear wall with slits is introduced. The infill steel plate is divided into a series of vertical flexural links with vertical links. The steel plate shear walls absorb energy by means of in-plane bending deformation of the flexural links and the energy dissipation capacity of the plastic hinges formed at both ends of the flexural links when under lateral loads. In this paper, finite element analysis and experimental studies at low cyclic loadings were conducted on specimens with steel plate shear walls with multilayer slits. The effects caused by varied slit pattern in terms of slit design parameters on lateral stiffness, ultimate bearing capacity and hysteretic behavior of the shear walls were analyzed. Results showed that the failure mode of steel plate shear walls with a single-layer slit was more likely to be out-of-plane buckling of the flexural links. As a result, the lateral stiffness and the ultimate bearing capacity were relatively lower when the precondition of the total height of the vertical slits remained the same. Differently, the failure mode of steel plate shear walls with multilayer slits was prone to global buckling of the infill steel plates; more obvious tensile fields provided evidence to the fact of higher lateral stiffness and excellent ultimate bearing capacity. It was also concluded that multilayer specimens exhibited better energy dissipation capacity compared with single-layer plate shear walls.