Performance of special RC shear walls under lateral cyclic and axial loads

•Increasing the axial load from zero to 10 percent, resulted in an increase in ductility and lateral resistance; however, increasing the axial load to 15 percent reduced ductility by 10 percent.•ASCE41-17 overestimates the displacement corresponding to maximum resistance.•The stiffness calculated using the effective stiffness coefficient proposed by ACI318-19 and ASCE41-17 is greater than the experimental stiffness.•The effective stiffness of the wall increased as the axial load increased.•Following failure types dissipates more energy respectively: tension control flexural, compression control flexural, sliding shear.