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Steel plate shear walls (SPSWs) have become an increasingly popular lateral force resisting system in buildings. Although originally conceived to resist earthquake forces, recent developments raised questions as to the ability of SPSWs to resist blast loading, whereby the plate would resist out-of-plane impulsive pressures. To investigate this, two 0.4-scale single story SPSW specimens, representing the first story of a four story prototype SPSW, were fabricated and subjected to explosive charges. The out-of-plane resistance of the infill plate was analyzed using nonlinear finite-element analysis (FEA) and yield line theory. Results of these analyses showed the out-of-plane resistance is governed by the large deformations and inelastic material behavior and that yield line theory significantly underestimated the out-of-plane resistance in comparison with the finite-element analysis for infill plates typical of SPSW …