Reinforced Concrete (RC) shear walls are widely used in Nuclear power plants as effective lateral force resisting elements of the structure and these may experience nonlinear behavior for higher earthquake demand. Short shear walls of aspect ratio less than 1.5 generally experience combined shear flexure interaction. This paper presents the results of the displacement-controlled experiments performed on six RC short shear walls with varying aspect ratios (1, 1.25 and 1.5) for monotonic and reversed quasi-static cyclic loading. Simulation of the shear walls is then carried out by Finite element modeling and also by macro modeling considering the coupled shear and flexure behaviour. The shear response is estimated by softened truss theory using the concrete model given by Vecchio and Collins (1994) with a modification in softening part of the model and flexure response is estimated using moment curvature relationship. The accuracy of modeling is validated by comparing the simulated response with experimental one. Moreover, based on the experimental work a multi-linear hysteretic model is proposed for short shear walls. Finally ultimate load, drift, ductility, stiffness reduction and failure pattern of the shear walls are studied in details and hysteretic energy dissipation along with damage index are evaluated. © 2019 Techno-Press, Ltd.