A new type of ac plasma display panel (PDP) with shadow mask (SM-PDP) is presented for its effective structures with lower cost. A two-dimensional self-consistent fluid model is used to analyse the discharge characteristics of the SM-PDP cell in a simplified driving scheme. The effects of the addressing time, the sustaining frequency, the duty ratio of the sustain voltage and the rise time of the voltage pulse on the discharge efficiency are investigated in this paper. The simulation results can help us optimize the driving scheme of SM-PDP.