Abstract: A new type of energy dissipation device, lead viscoelastic damper (LVD), was introduced, which consists of lead core and viscoelastic materials. The LVD dissipates energy through shear strains of the viscoelastic material and compressive deformation or shear deformation of the lead core. Therefore, it combines the characteristics of both displacement-dependent and velocity-dependent dampers. Based on the different demand of the practical engineering structures, the lead rubber damper, the combined rubber damper, the lead viscoelastic damper and the steel-lead viscoelastic damper were developed, and the principle, configuration and characteristics were illustrated. The experiments on different types of dampers were conducted to study the performance of the LVDs. Experimental results show that the LVDs have good seismic energy dissipation capabilities, excellent ductilities and good performance of fatigue resistance. The hysteretic behavior of the LVDs was simulated with bilinear model, Bilinear-RO model and Bouc-wen model, and the simulating results agreed well with the experimental results.The design process of the structure with the LVDs and the LVD were studied. Finally, the practical engineering structures with the LVDs were introduced.