Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea ISSN:1229-3059(Print) 2287-2302(Online) 한국전산구조공학회 논문집

This paper presents a generalized finite element formulation for plastic hinge modeling based on lumped plasticity in the classical Euler-Bernoulli beam elements. In this approach, the plastic hinges are effectively modeled using proper enrichment functions describing weak discontinuities of the solution. The proposed methodology enables the insertion of plastic hinges at an arbitrary location without modifying the connectivity of elements. The formations of plastic hinges are instead achieved by hierarchically adding degrees of freedom to existing elements. Convergence analyses such as h- and p-extensions are performed to investigate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The analysis results indicate that the proposed generalized finite element method can achieve theoretical convergence rates for both cases where plastic hinges are located at nodes and within an element, thus demonstrating its accuracy.