Employing the ETABS software， this study comprehensively investigates the seismic performance of shear wall structures under horizontal earthquake action. ETABS software incorporates various nonlinear factors to calculate the story drift ratio of the structures， thereby demonstrating an improved analysis method for their story drift ratio limits under horizontal seismic action. Adopting a regional shear wall structure as a case study， four sets of natural seismic waves and one set of artificial waves are generated. The results show that the maximum story drift ratio of the shear wall structure is approximately 0.000 8 rad under different seismic-wave actions， remaining within the 1/1 000 limit. This indicates that the shear wall structure maintains good integrity and stability under horizontal seismic action， effectively resisting a certain degree of seismic damage. By analyzing the story drift reserve ratio， the drift limit of the wall is relaxed to 1/500. Under the artificial horizontal seismic wave action， the maximum damage factor for the wall structure is approximately 0.45， indicating minor damage and compliance with safety requirements. Therefore， the feasibility of relaxing the story drift ratio limit to 1/500 is demonstrated. Classifying the time-frequency data of seismic waves using the proposed method enables accurate distinction between high-and low-frequency components. Furthermore， the contribution rates of each seismic wave to the story drift ratio limit of the shear wall structure all exceed 93%， reaching a maximum of 98.55%. These results demonstrate the high accuracy of the proposed method in analyzing the story drift ratio limits of shear wall structures.