ABSTRACT Accurate seismic analysis of building clusters is a fundamental challenge in earthquake engineering, complicated by the significant influence of Site‐City Interaction (SCI) effects. To provide a rigorous analytical foundation for this problem, this paper presents a novel semi‐analytical framework for the dynamic analysis of three‐dimensional (3D) building clusters under arbitrarily incident seismic waves. The site is modeled as a layered half‐space, while buildings are characterized by rigid surface foundations supporting Multi‐Degree‐of‐Freedom (MDOF) superstructures. The theoretical core of the framework is a wavefield separation strategy which isolates the site response to seismic waves (the free‐field) from the waves generated by the vibrations of buildings (the scattered field). The free‐field response is computed via the Dynamic Stiffness Matrix Method (DSMM), while the scattered field is rigorously formulated using Green's functions to explicitly represent the complex wave radiation and scattering phenomena that govern the SCI. The validity and reliability of the proposed method are verified through comparisons with existing shaking table test results. Numerical examples demonstrate that the modest demand on computational resources of the proposed framework, enables a comprehensive parametric study analyzing the influence of building layout, spacing, and seismic excitation on structural response considering building parameters uncertainty, thus overcoming the primary limitations of conventional numerical methods. These features make the semi‐analytical framework serve as both a powerful and efficient tool for predicting the seismic response of building clusters and a critical benchmark for calibrating and verifying numerical models.
Ba et al. (Thu,) studied this question.