• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.485-498
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• 2022

In near-fault earthquake prone areas, the velocity pulse-like seismic waves often results in excessive horizontal displacement for structures, which may result in severe structural failure during large or near-fault earthquakes. The recently developed isolator-gap damper (IGD) systems provide a solution for the large horizontal displacement of long period base-isolated structures. However, the hysteresis characteristics of the IGD system are significantly different from the traditional hysteretic behavior. At present, the hysteretic behavior is difficult to be reflected in the structural analysis and performance evaluation especially under random earthquake excitations for lacking of effective analysis models which prevent the application of this kind of IGD system. In this paper, we propose a mathematical hysteretic model for the IGD system that presents its nonlinear hysteretic characteristics. The equivalent linearization is conducted on this nonlinear model, which requires the variances of the IGD responses. The covariance matrix for the responses of the structure and the IGD system is obtained for random earthquake excitations represented by the Kanai-Tajimi spectrum by solving the Lyapunov equation. The responses obtained by the equivalent linearization are verified in comparison with the nonlinear responses by the Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) analysis for random earthquake excitations.