Acceleration Transfer Function of Secondary Systems

Abstract

This paper presents an alternative formulation for the transfer function of the absolute acceleration response of a single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) secondary system supported on an earthquake-excited, classically damped primary system. This formulation is based on the use of fixed-base mode shapes of the primary system and thus does not require the computation of the modal properties of the combined system. This formulation requires the knowledge of the power-spectral-density function of the earthquake motion to obtain the desired floor response spectra. This has been illustrated in the case of an example building and a band-limited white noise excitation.