Steel plate shear walls are among the lateral load-resisting systems that have been successfully applied to both mid-rise and high-rise buildings located in seismic prone zones. Despite the numerous advantages of this system, it highlights several disadvantages such as: i) negligible shear buckling strength of the thin plates; ii) significant stiffness degradation due to buckling phenomena; iii) significant out-of-plane nonlinear deformation after shear buckling of the web plate. One solution to improve the behavior is to weld stiffeners on the web element, but with consequently increase in both cost and construction time. Moreover, the welded stiffeners inevitably produce residual stresses and local initial imperfections in the plates. For the above reasons, the employment of corrugated plates represents an interesting alternative to solve the problem. However, a deep investigation into this topic is required to determine the best configuration of the waves leading to optimal nonlinear behavior and plasticization of the wall after early-stage buckling. In this context, nonlinear numerical analyses based on the FE method represent fundamental support to investigate the non-linear behavior of corrugate plates with different geometries. The study is divided into two main phases, first, a refined FE numerical model of corrugated steel shear wall (CSPSW) is calibrated comparing experimental results of the specimen subjected to cyclic loading. Then the second phase is related to the parametric study by means of FE numerical analyses on 24 specimens finalized to investigate the nonlinear behavior and failure of the overall frame system considering two wave shapes, trapezoidal and sinusoidal, respectively. The main results give design remarks and limitation ranges for the wave geometry parameters in terms of height, width, and angle of the wave in order to optimize the structural response in terms of nonlinear plastic deformations, ductility, energy dissipation, buckling instability, strength, and stiffness of CSPSWs.