Abstract: | A new formulation of the transfer function has been proposed for the seismic analysis of linear, multiply supported secondary systems. The transfer function for a given response quantity has been formulated by directly using the fixed-base modes of the primary and secondary systems. This approach is exact and does not involve the determination of the combined system properties. Further, it is applicable to the secondary systems with various mass ratios and configurations. A few example primary–secondary systems have been considered to illustrate the proposed formulation in case of different mass ratios. It has also been shown how the proposed formulation can be used to obtain reasonably accurate stochastic estimates of the secondary system responses. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |