This paper gives a short overview on the Ytong Building System and discusses possible seismic verifi cation concepts. Moreover it proposes three-dimensional finite element models for unreinforced and reinforced walls panels in aerated autoclaved concrete on the basis of the concrete damage plasticity constitutive law implemented into the FEM toolkit ABAQUS. The paper focuses on an unreinforced ten panel shear wall and on a reinforced four panel shear wall. For the latter, two different solutions are developed: in the fi rst the reinforcement is directly embedded into the AAC mesh, while in the second grouted cores around the reinforcement bars are taken into account. The quasi-static loading condition was simulated using both static and dynamic implicit analysis, switching from the former to the latter at the occurrence of nonlinearities. The simulation results show that the AAC shear wall models can correctly represent the load-displacement responses as well as the cracking patterns and crack propagations. The concrete damage plasticity constitutive law allows for a proper representation of the cyclic behavior and the damage accumulation of AAC shear walls, which is very important for the performance-based design of structures under seismic loading. Further researches are recommended in order to improve the results and to investigate different combinations of applied axial load, aspect ratios and reinforcement details. The long term goal is the development of a feasible and powerful deformation based seismic verifi cation procedure for the Ytong Building System.