Abstract: The objective of this study was to investigate the seismic force resisting mechanisms of structural walls considering the interaction with the foundation beam, ground floor slabs and piles that supported the walls. Based on the experimental studies of two 15% scale multi-story structural walls under the cyclic lateral loading, a detachment model was proposed to develop a simple method to design a reinforced concrete structural wall with peripheral members. The predicted behavior of two specimens using such a proposed model was compared with the experimental results. It is concluded that the behavior of structural walls could be modeled well using the proposed model. Although the degree of detachment does not need to be modeled for predicting the deformations of the shear wall, it does need to be considered for correctly predicting the behavior of the foundation beam.