Abstract: In order to study the earthquake-induced pounding on structural responses, based on a new damping function, a linear viscoelastic pounding model is proposed, which absorbs the advantages of Kelvin and Hertz-damp models. Then the effectiveness of the proposed model is verified by comparing the results of numerical analysis with results of two impact experiments. The results of the study indicate that the initial jump of the pounding force and negative pounding force before separation in a Kelvin model can be thoroughly eliminated in the proposed model. Both the linear viscoelastic and Hertz-damp models can give relatively precise results in simulating the pounding force time histories compared to other commonly used pounding models. Moreover, an advantage of the proposed model is that it has a simpler expression compared to the Hertz-damp model. This implies that the proposed model can be much easier to be used in the pounding simulation. It is also found that it will lead to overestimation of damage effects if the energy loss is neglected during pounding simulation.