Original Research Advances in Structural Engineering 1–14 Ó The Author(s) 2019 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/1369433219870579 journals.sagepub.com/home/ase Inductance effect of passive electromagnetic dampers on building- damper system subjected to near-fault earthquakes Wei Guo 1,2 , Xiaoli Wu 1,2 , Xinna Wei 1,3 , Yao Cui 4 and Dan Bu 5 Abstract The passive electromagnetic damper was commonly simplified into the linear viscous model in numerical analysis, while this simplifica- tion may produce large error when the damper inductance is obvious. In this article, an optimal passive electromagnetic damper with good performance and economy characteristic is proposed by parameter optimization, where the damping density is set as the optimi- zation objective. The hysteresis behavior of the passive electromagnetic damper is verified, and by neglecting the inductance effect, the passive electromagnetic damper can be simplified into the linear viscous model in some cases, but actually the inductance effect is obvious under the high-frequency excitation. Subsequently, the effect of inductance on seismic performance of building damper system under the near-fault earthquake is investigated by comparing the simplified linear viscous model and the accurate passive electromag- netic model. The passive electromagnetic damper was supplemented in a 9-story building, and the analysis of the accurate passive elec- tromagnetic model was carried out by the co-simulation of MATLAB and OpenSees based on the client–server technology. It concludes that the inductance effect is obvious and causes large error when the building damper system is subjected to the near-fault earthquake, and the energy dissipation performance described by the linear viscous model is overestimated. Keywords client–server technology, damping density, inductance effect, near-fault earthquake, parameter optimization, passive electromagnetic damper Introduction Energy dissipation system for seismic application has been under a rapid development in recent years, and a number of passive energy dissipation devices are widely developed for seismic protection of structures, including passive electromagnetic (PEM) damper, buckling-restrained brace, viscous fluid dampers, vis- coelastic solid dampers, friction dampers, and metallic dampers (Aghlara et al., 2018; Gunneyisi and Deringol, 2018; Guo et al., 2019a; Jia et al., 2018; Liu et al., 2018; Silwal et al., 2016). These dampers usually perform different seismic control effect of buildings (Guo et al., 2019b, 2019c, 2019d). Compared with other dampers, the PEM damper as a novel dashpot and exhibits the advantage of longer operating life due to the non-contact energy dissipation mechanism (Dr. Franjo Tudjmann Bridge, 2008; Palomera-Arias, 2005, 2008; Zheng et al., 2006). The PEM damper usually performs like viscous damper (Vujic, 2002; Zhu et al., 2012), and the viscous damper is widely used as bridge seismic protection devices (He et al., 2017; Vader and McDaniel, 2007). Furthermore, it also possesses more advantages, such as no oil leakage and no failure due to rapid motion (Montazeri-Gh and Kavianipour, 2012; Zheng et al., 2006). Thus, the PEM damper pos- sessing such advantages could in some degree replace the traditional viscous damper (Jung et al., 2012; Shen and Zhu, 2015). Although electromagnetic damper can achieve the self-powered semi-active or even active control by energy generation, the realization of this 1 School of Civil Engineering, Central South University, Changsha, China 2 National Engineering Laboratory for High Speed Railway Construction, Changsha, China 3 College of Civil Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, China 4 State Key Laboratory of Coastal and Offshore Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China 5 Hunan Architectural Design Institute, Changsha, China Corresponding author: Yao Cui, State Key Laboratory of Coastal and Offshore Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, Liaoning, China. Email: cuiyao@dlut.edu.cn