A Novel Incremental Iterative Force Recovery Method for Second-Order Beam-Column Elements in Plastic Hinge Analysis of Steel Frames

This paper is concerned with an incremental iterative force recovery method in the second-order plastic hinge analysis of steel frames mainly modelled by a single element per member. Second-order beam-column elements are preferred in the direct analysis of steel frames due to their high accuracy and efficiency. However, formulations of these elements are complicated, and therefore they may have a problem of getting element force recovery in inelastic analysis. To overcome this difficulty, a novel incremental iterative force recovery method for second-order beam-column elements is proposed to perform plastic hinge analysis. The proposed method is derived more strictly and has good performance. Also, the section assemblage approach and the refined plastic hinge method are adopted in this study to consider the gradual degradation of section stiffness in the plastic hinge analysis. To verify the accuracy, efficiency and robustness of the proposed method, several benchmark examples are analyzed by the proposed method and compared with solutions reported by early researchers.