Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering 34 (2019) 146–163
Generalized Finite Element Formulation of Fiber
Beam Elements for Distributed Plasticity in Multiple
Regions
Kyoungsoo Park & Hyungtae Kim
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea
Department of Architectural Engineering, Kyung Hee University, Yongin, Gyeonggi, Korea
Abstract: A generalized fiber beam element formulation
is proposed to accurately capture the formation of mul-
tiple plastic regions with a coarse mesh, which usually
occurs in the process of structural collapses. The strong
gradient of displacement near plastic regions in a fiber
beam element can be accurately described using a special
plastic enrichment function. The two types of the plastic
enrichment functions are suggested for the cases where
the plastic region is located fully inside an element and
spread over a node, respectively. In this approach, the
optimal shape of the plastic enrichment function can be
updated by reflecting plastic deformation at the previous
loading step. Furthermore, if plastic regions appear in
multiple locations in an element, the corresponding plas-
tic enrichment function can be adaptively reconstructed
on the basis of plastic region distribution without intro-
ducing additional degrees of freedom. The effectiveness
of the proposed method is investigated in terms of accu-
racy and computational cost through several numerical
experiments.
1 INTRODUCTION
Recently, there have been an increasing number of
structural collapse accidents all over the world due to
natural and man-made disasters such as earthquakes,
∗ To whom correspondence should be addressed.
djkim@khu.ac.kr.

C 2018 Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering.
DOI: 10.1111/mice.12389
&
Dae-Jin Kim*
tsunamis, hurricanes, and terrorist attacks. These events
generally lead to a large number of civilian casualties
and serious damage to properties, for examples, Alfred
P. Murrah federal building collapse in the United States
in 1995 (Sozen et al., 1998), Taiwan earthquake in 1999
(Wu and Lindell, 2004), complete structural collapse of
the World Trade Center in 2001 (Bažant and Verdure,
2007), Chile earthquake in 2010 (Miranda et al., 2012),
Fukushima-Daiichi combined disaster in 2011 (Ohnishi,
2012), and so on. Because of these disasters, design
standards, such as ASCE standard (ASCE, 2005) and
Eurocode 1 (CEN, 1994), require to account for abnor-
mal loading events. In addition, the U.S. Department
of Defense announced analysis and guidelines for
progressive collapse of building structures, for example,
alternate-load path design strategy (GSA, 2003; DoD,
2005). In the alternate-load path design, the residual
load-carrying capacity of a structure is checked when
one or more members are removed. To evaluate the
residual capacity and support structural design, it is
highly important to develop advanced computational
methodologies that can accurately simulate and predict
structural behaviors such as the process of struc-
tural collapses (Ellingwood and Dusenberry, 2005).
Meanwhile, technologies that can accurately monitor
structural response due to real-time loading conditions
and detect damage in the structure also have drawn
E-mail: attention (Cha et al., 2017; Kim et al., 2017; Rafiei
and Adeli, 2017). In general, the collapse of building
 Generalized finite element formulation of fiber beam elements for distributed plasticity
Perfect pin
Plastic hinge location
(a)
Plastic hinge
Plastic region
(b)
Fig. 1. Two types of plastic hinge modeling: (a) lumped
plasticity and (b) distributed plasticity.
structures is simulated by the successive formation of
plastic hinges in the frame structure, and the plastic
hinges can be modeled based on either lumped or
distributed plasticity, as illustrated in Figure 1. The
lumped plasticity model ideally assumes that plastic
deformation is concentrated only at the location of
plastic hinges, and thus the plastic hinges can be
described as an internal pin (Adeli and Mabrouk,
1985; Adeli and Chyou, 1986). The deformed shape
of a frame member is continuous at the plastic hinge,
but its derivative becomes discontinuous. Then, to
represent plastic deformation on beam-column joints,
a local joint damage model was used in conjunction
with nonlinear springs for the analysis of progressive
collapse of steel frameworks (Grierson et al., 2005;
Liu et al., 2010). However, because nonlinearities are
concentrated at a point, the lumped plasticity model
is limited to accurately describe plastic deformation
within a member and predict post-yielding behaviors.
In the distributed plasticity model, the plastic defor-
mation is spread over a certain length of the mem-
ber near the plastic hinge, which is called a yield
zone. As a result, there exists a strong gradient in the
deformed shape of the member, but not a disconti-
nuity. The distributed plasticity concept is well-suited
to the modeling of a beam member, of which section
147
is composed of a number of fibers with axially non-
linear material properties. This fiber beam model is
able to more realistically predict the post-yielding be-
havior of the beam member, and thus preferred in
the analysis of structural frames subjected to extreme
loadings such as earthquakes and explosions. Because
of its accuracy and simplicity, the fiber beam model
has been widely used, for example, to investigate seis-
mic response of structural members, seismic retrofit de-
signing, and fragility analysis of bridges and buildings
(Torbol et al., 2013; Park et al., 2015, 2016). In the
fiber beam model based on the distributed plasticity,
the effect of plastic regions can be accurately captured
using a large number of elements, if the conventional
finite element method (FEM) is used. However, this
leads to a significant increase of computational cost,
which may become a great burden to use this method
in practical engineering applications. To effectively han-
dle this issue, a force-based fiber beam element formu-
lation was proposed by Spacone et al. (1996a, b). In
this approach, the finite element shape functions are
utilized to describe the force equilibrium of the fiber
beam member, and thus the conventional linear La-
grangian finite element shape functions are sufficient to
satisfy the equilibrium unless no element loads are ap-
plied. However, it requires a multiple iteration proce-
dure, which does not exist in the displacement-based
fiber beam approach. This apparently complicates its
numerical implementation, and a stability issue may be
raised in the course of the multiple iteration procedure
required.
In this study, a new fiber beam element formula-
tion is developed to accurately capture the formation of
multiple plastic deformations using a coarse mesh. This
methodology is based on the recently developed Gen-
eralized/eXtended FEM (Duarte et al., 2000; Babuška
and Melenk, 1997; Moës et al., 1999), which allows the
utilization of a priori knowledge about the solution of
a boundary value problem in the form of enrichment
functions. The strong gradient of the fiber beam mem-
ber near plastic hinges can be accurately described us-
ing a special enrichment function in conjunction with
a nonlinear solution of a previous step. Therefore, in
this approach, the optimal shape of the enrichment
function can be updated by reflecting plastic deforma-
tion at the previous loading step. Furthermore, if plas-
tic regions appear in multiple locations in an element,
the corresponding plastic enrichment function can be
adaptively reconstructed on the basis of plastic region
distribution without introducing additional degrees of
freedom (DOFs).
Based on this idea, this article is organized as follows.
In Section 2, relevant concepts and formulation for
the conventional fiber beam elements are introduced.
148 Park, Kim & Kim
(a) (b)
Fig. 2. (a) Kinematic assumptions for a planar beam and (b)
discretization of a cross-section of a planar beam for a fiber
model.
Section 3 provides a brief review on the generalized fi-
nite element approximation, and discusses the plastic
zone modeling with the generalized finite element shape
functions and related numerical implementation issues.
Several numerical problems are solved in Section 4 us-
ing the proposed approach to demonstrate its accuracy
and computational efficiency. The summary and con-
cluding remarks are provided in Section 5.
2 FIBER BEAM ELEMENT FORMULATION
The motion of a planar beam is based on the kinematic
assumption that plane sections remain as a plane, as il-
lustrated in Figure 2a. The axial displacement within a
cross-section along the longitudinal direction (u x (x, y))
is given as
u x (x, y) = u(x) − yχz (x) (1)
where u(x) is the axial displacement at the centroid of
a cross-section along the x-axis, and χz (x) is the rota-
tion of a cross-section along the z-axis. In this study, the
Bernoulli–Euler beam is employed, and thus the rota-
tion of a plane is equal to the derivative of the vertical
displacement (w(x)), that is, χz = w  .
The governing equation is obtained from the princi-
ple of virtual work. The virtual internal work done by
the virtual axial and vertical displacements (δu, δw) is
equal to the virtual external work done by the axial and
vertical loads (qx , q y ), given as
 
(δu  − δw  y)σx x dV − (δuqx + δwq y )dV = 0 (2)
 
The virtual work expression is solved by approximating
the axial and vertical displacements as a linear combi-
nation of basis functions, that is,
u(x) = N u T (x)u (3)
and
w(x) = N w T (x)w (4)
where u and w are vectors of unknown coefficients, and
N u (x) and N w (x) are basis function vectors for the ax-
ial and vertical displacements, respectively. The linear
shape functions are usually utilized for the basis func-
tions of N u , whereas the cubic Hermite shape func-
tions are generally used for N w . Based on the Galerkin
approximation, substituting the approximated displace-
ments (Equations (3) and (4)) into the virtual work ex-
pression (Equation (2)) results in

(δu T B u σx x − δw T B w yσx x )dV


− (δu T B u qx + δw T B w q y )dV = 0 (5)

where B u and B w are, respectively, vectors of the first
and second derivatives of the basis functions, that is,
B u = N u  and B w = N w  . Note that the normal stress
within a cross-section (σx x ) is obtained from the con-
stitutive relation of a material for a given deformation.
Then, the internal force vector and the tangent stiffness
matrix are given as
  
f int
=  B u σx x dV (6)
− B w yσx x dV
and
   
T
 B u E t B u dV −
 B u y E t B w T dV
∇f int
= (7)
− B w y E t B u T dV B w y 2 E t B w T dV
respectively, where E t is the tangent modulus in the uni-
axial stress–strain relationship. Note that the volume in-
tegral can be divided into a line integral along the axial
direction and an area integral of a cross-section, because
B u and B w are constant within a cross-section.
To account for nonlinear stress distribution within
a cross-section of a beam element, a fiber model is
employed (Spacone et al., 1996a). In a fiber model, a
beam element is divided into a group of longitudinal
fibers, while each fiber describes the uniaxial stress–
strain relationship of a material. Then, a section force
of an internal stress, which corresponds to the area in-
tegral of a cross-section for the internal force vector, is
expressed as
    n 
D(x) =  σx x dA ≈ i=1
n
σi Ai
(8)
− yσx x dA − i=1 yi σi Ai
where Ai and yi are, respectively, the area and y-
coordinate of the ith fiber, as shown in Figure 2b, and
n is the number of fibers. The stress of the ith fiber (σi )
is obtained from the uniaxial stress–strain relationship
of a material for a given strain of the ith fiber. Similarly,
 Generalized finite element formulation of fiber beam elements for distributed plasticity 149

a section stiffness matrix of an internal stress is the area

integral of the tangent stiffness matrix, given as
   
 E t dA − 2y E t dA
k(x) =
 −n y E t dA y E t dA
n  (9)
n E i A i −n i=1 y2i E i Ai
≈ i=1
− i=1 yi E i Ai i=1 yi E i Ai

where E i is the tangent modulus of the ith fiber.

3 GENERALIZED FINITE ELEMENT

FORMULATION OF FIBER BEAM ELEMENTS
FOR DISTRIBUTED PLASTICITY ANALYSIS

3.1 Generalized finite element method (GFEM)

The construction of generalized finite element approx-
imations is briefly reviewed in this section. Further de-
tails on the generalized finite element can be found in
many references (Oden et al., 1998; Duarte et al., 2000;
Kim et al., 2012). The GFEM is an instance of the so-
called partition of unity method (Duarte and Oden,
1996; Babuška and Melenk, 1997). The generalized fi-
nite element shape functions φαi are built from the prod-
uct of a partition of unity ϕα and enrichment functions
L αi given by
φαi = ϕα L αi i ∈ I(α) (no sum on α) (10)
where ϕα , α = 1, . . . , N , N being the number of nodes,
constitutes a partition of unity. The partition of unity is a
set offunctions defined in a domain  with the property
N
that α=1 ϕα (x) = 1 for all x in . The index set of the
enrichment functions at a vertex node x α is denoted by
I(α).
Linear Lagrangian finite element shape functions are
generally used as the partition of unity in the GFEM.
The support of ϕα , {x : ϕα (x) = 0}, is denoted by ωα .
In the GFEM, the support ωα is given by the union of
the finite elements sharing a vertex node x α . The result-
ing shape functions are called generalized finite element
shape functions. The construction process of the gen-
eralized finite element shape functions is illustrated in
Figure 3.
The main advantage of the GFEM is that it has a
great freedom in choosing enrichment functions L αi
(Belytschko et al., 2009; Fries and Belytschko, 2010). As
an example, Heaviside and Westergaard functions can
be used as enrichment functions to accurately describe
the discontinuity and singularity in the interior of a fi-
nite element caused by the presence of a crack (Moës
et al., 1999; Sukumar et al., 2000; Park et al., 2009). En-
richment functions that are solutions for local boundary
value problems can be used as well (Kim et al., 2010;
Kim et al., 2011; Pereira et al., 2012; Kim et al., 2015;
Duarte and Kim, 2008). Furthermore, the enrichment
Fig. 3. Construction of a generalized FEM shape function.
Here, ϕα is the function at the top, L αi is the function in the
middle, and the generalized FE shape function, φαi , is shown
at the bottom.
scheme of the GFEM can be successfully expressed in
an object-oriented framework (Bordas et al., 2007; Yu
and Adeli, 1993; Chuang and Adeli, 1993), which facil-
itates its implementation with programming languages
such as C++ and Java.
A generalized finite element approximation of a
scalar field u(x) defined on a domain  ⊂ RI n , n =
1, 2, 3, can be expressed as
N
N
u h (x) = u αi φαi (x) = ϕα (x)u hα (x) (11)
α=1 i∈I(α) α=1
where u αi, α = 1, . . . , N , i ∈ I(α), are nodal DOFs and
u hα (x) := i∈I(α) u αi L αi (x) denotes a local approxima-
tion of the field u(x) defined on ωα and belonging to the
local space
χα (ωα ) = span{L αi (x)}i∈I(α) (12)
where L αi , i ∈ I(α), are basis or enrichment functions
and L α1 = 1.
The generalized finite element approximation (Equa-
tion (11)) can be used with the Galerkin method to
find a solution of a boundary value problem as in the
standard FEM. This procedure leads to a system of
equations for the unknown DOFs u αi . The system of
equations can be solved by using either a direct or an
iterative method (Heath, 2002).
3.2 Distributed plasticity modeling with generalized
finite element shape functions
3.2.1 Shape function formulation. The displacement
field of the present formulation requires both axial
150 Park, Kim & Kim

Fig. 4. Distribution of plastic regions in a three-span continuous beam.

(u) and vertical (w) displacements as presented in

Equation (1). The axial displacement approximation
can be expressed by

N
u= Nα u α (13)
α=1

where Nα is the conventional linear finite element shape

function defined at node α, u α the corresponding axial
DOF, and N is the number of nodes.
The GFEM approximation for the vertical displace- Fig. 5. Plastic region located fully inside an element.
ment can be presented by

N
 where xα is the x-coordinate of node α, and h α is the
w= ϕα L αi w 0αi + Bα L αi w αi
E
, (14) largest length of the elements sharing the node α. For
α=1 i∈I(α) example, the sets of the polynomial enrichments corre-
where ϕα , α = 1, . . . , N , are partition of unity functions, sponding to quadratic ( p = 2), cubic ( p = 3), and quartic
L αi , i ∈ I(α) are polynomial enrichment functions de- ( p = 4) approximations can be constructed as follows:
   
fined at node α, Bα is the plastic enrichment function x − xα x − xα 2
defined at node α and required only at the nodes of el- L αi = 1, , , ( p = 2)
hα hα
ements with plastic deformation, and w 0αi and w αi E
are
the nodal DOFs corresponding to the polynomial and     
x − xα x − xα 2 x − xα 3
plastic enrichments, respectively. 1, , , , ( p = 3)
As Equation (2) contains the integral term of sec- hα hα hα
ond derivative of displacement and virtual displacement    
x − xα x − xα 2 x − xα 3
requiring the C 1 feature of shape functions, the cubic 1, , , ,
Hermite shape functions are utilized for the partition of hα hα hα
unity functions associated with displacement. They are  
the simplest partition of unity satisfying the C 1 feature x − xα 4
, ( p = 4) (18)
and also satisfy the so-called Kronecker-delta property, hα
that is,
With the use of this form of the polynomial enrichment
ϕα (xβ ) = δαβ , α, β = 1, . . . , N (15) functions, the DOFs corresponding to polynomial en-
richments with i = 1 and 2 ( w 0α1 and w 0α2 ) can have
In addition, the derivative of the partition of unity func-
the physical meaning of displacement and rotation at
tion defined at node α becomes zero at any node β,
node α, respectively, and thus the imposition of essen-
that is,
tial boundary conditions can become as straightforward
dϕα (xβ ) as in the standard FEM. This is further discussed in
= 0, α, β = 1, . . . , N (16)
dx Section 3.2.3. The normalization using h α in Equa-
As the polynomial enrichment functions (L αi ), the tion (17) is helpful to minimize round-off errors, as al-
following scaled monomials are used, that is, ready discussed in Duarte et al. (2000).

x − xα (i−1) 3.2.2 Plastic enrichment. To accurately capture mul-
L αi = (17)
hα tiple yield regions in a member, plastic enrichment
 Generalized finite element formulation of fiber beam elements for distributed plasticity 151

functions (B) at a loading step are constructed on the

basis of the computational solution of plastic regions of
the previous loading step. For example, Figure 4 shows
a possible distribution of plastic regions indicated by
an isoyield stress line in a three-span continuous beam
structure subjected to concentrated loads. It is assumed
that only a single fiber beam element is used for a single

Bξ
span for the discussion of this section. Under this condi-
tion, totally five plastic regions are formed in the struc-
ture, and they can be categorized into two cases, that is,
(1) plastic region located fully inside an element such as
#1, #3, and #5, and (2) plastic region spread over a node
such as #2 and #4. To effectively deal with the two dif-
ferent cases, two different types of plastic enrichment ξ ξ
functions are proposed in this section. The formation of ξ
multiple plastic regions in a single element can be ef-
fectively handled by the combination of the two plastic
enrichment functions, and this issue is discussed at the Bξ
end of this section. еBξ
еξ
For the derivation of the plastic enrichment function
for the first case, a simply supported beam structure il-
lustrated in Figure 5 is considered. In this case, the ele-

ξ
ment is composed of two elastic regions near the nodes

е
Bξ

Bξ
and one plastic region (or yield zone) in the middle. As

е
similar to the partition of unity function proposed in
Section 3.2.1, the plastic enrichment functions also must
satisfy C 1 requirement throughout the entire element.
In addition to this, the plastic enrichment function must
have a strong gradient in the plastic region.
To satisfy all the conditions discussed above, based ξ ξ
on the idea discussed in Xu et al. (2012), the enrichment ξ
function is proposed as
⎧
⎪
⎪ B p = aξ 3 + bξ 2 + cξ + d, Fig. 6. Enrichment function for a plastic hinge within an
⎨
element: (a) construction of the enrichment function for a
B= 2
2 (19)
⎪
⎪ B = φ (ξ )|d | − |φα (ξ )dα | plastic hinge within an element, and (b) enrichment function
⎩ e α α
and its derivative.
α=1 α=1

This function is expressed in terms of the natural later. The coefficients a, b, c, and d in Equation (19) are
coordinate ξ , which is defined by ξ = 2(x − x1 )/(x2 − determined from the following boundary conditions:
x1 ) − 1 (−1 ≤ ξ ≤ 1). Here, x1 and x2 are the coordi-
nates of the first and second nodes of a fiber beam ele- ∂ B p (ξ1 ) ∂ Be (ξ1 )
ment, respectively. In the above equation, B p is applied B p (ξ1 ) = Be (ξ1 ), =
∂ξ ∂ξ (20)
if ξ1 ≤ ξ ≤ ξ2 , and Be is utilized, otherwise. As shown ∂ B p (ξ2 ) ∂ Be (ξ2 )
in Figure 6a, the proposed enrichment function is com- B p (ξ2 ) = Be (ξ2 ), =
∂ξ ∂ξ
posed of two parts, which are the plastic (B p ) and elastic
(Be ) parts. Its elastic part is conceptually similar to the Figure 6b shows the proposed enrichment function
enrichment function for weak discontinuity proposed by and its derivative where ξ1 and ξ2 are 0.27 and 0.7, re-
Moës et al. (2003), and dα in Equation (19) is propor- spectively. Notice that it satisfies C 1 requirement at the
tional to the distance between the onset location of plas- boundary of the yield zone and C ∞ at all the other loca-
tic deformation (ξ0 ) and node α. The plastic part of the tions of the natural coordinates (−1 ≤ ξ ≤ 1). Further-
enrichment function ranges from ξ1 to ξ2 in the natural more, it can satisfy the following conditions, which can
coordinate system, and ξ1 and ξ2 are adaptively updated be utilized for straightforward imposition of displace-
by a stress state of a fiber beam element, as discussed ment boundary conditions:
152
Fig. 7. Boundary between the elastic region and the plastic
region.
Fig. 8. Plastic region spread over a node.
Bα (xβ ) = 0, α, β = 1, . . . , N
dBα (xβ )
= 0, α, β = 1, . . . , N (22)
dx
The values of ξ1 and ξ2 in the plastic enrichment
function (Equation (19)) are evaluated on the basis of
the stress state within a beam element. The boundary
between the elastic and plastic stress regions is first iden-
tified during the finite element analysis. For example,
the plastic stress region is described as a shaded region
in Figure 7. Then, the boundaries between the elastic
and plastic parts in the enrichment function (i.e., ξ1 , ξ2 )
would be in between ξe1 and ξe2 where ξe1 and ξe2 are
the position where the entire section is under the elastic
stress state. In this study, ξ1 and ξ2 are defined as
(h − h e ) (ξ0 − ξe1 )
ξ1 = ξ0 − = γ (ξ0 − ξe1 )
h 2
and
(h − h e ) (ξe2 − ξ0 )
ξ2 = ξ 0 + = γ (ξe2 − ξ0 ) (24)
h 2
respectively, where h is the height of a cross-section. In
addition, h e is the height of the elastic stress state region
at the onset location of yielding (ξ0 ), and (h − h e ) leads
to the height of the plastic stress state region. As a re-
sult, γ can be interpreted as the relative height of the
plastic stress state region at ξ0 .
For the case where a plastic region is spread over
a node, a cantilever beam structure illustrated in Fig-
ure 8 is considered. It is assumed that the onset loca-
tion of plastic deformation is the left node of the beam
(i.e., ξ0 = ξ1 = −1), and thus the beam element consists
Park, Kim & Kim
of a plastic region and an elastic region. The plastic en-
richment for the cantilever can be initially given as

B p = aξ 2 + bξ + c
B=   (25)
B e = 2α=1 φα (ξ )|dα | − 2α=1 |φα (ξ )dα |
where, similarly to the case of Equation (19), B p is ap-
plied if ξ1 ≤ ξ ≤ ξ2 , and B e is utilized, otherwise. In this
case, ξ1 is set to be −1 whereas ξ2 is obtained from
Equation (24). In Equation (25), the coefficients a, b,
and c are determined from the boundary conditions
given below and provided in the Appendix.
∂ B p (ξ1 )
= 0, B p (ξ2 ) = B e (ξ2 ),
∂ξ
∂ B p (ξ2 ) ∂ B e (ξ2 )
= (26)
∂ξ ∂ξ
The shape of this function with ξ2 = −0.6 is illustrated
in Figure 9a. As can be seen from the figure, it does not
satisfy the condition given by Equation (21), which is
essential for the straightforward imposition of displace-
(21)
ment boundary conditions. To address this issue, the
enrichment function of Equation (25) is modified using
the concept of the so-called stable generalized finite ele-
ment method (SGFEM) (Babuška and Banerjee, 2012;
Gupta et al., 2013) as follows:
B = B(ξ ) − I(B(ξ )) (27)
where I(B(ξ )) is the cubic polynomial interpolation of
the enrichment function B(ξ ) satisfying the following
boundary conditions, given as:
∂I(B(−1)) ∂ B(−1)
I(B(−1)) = B(−1), =
∂ξ ∂ξ (28)
∂I(B(1)) ∂ B(1)
I(B(1)) = B(1), =
∂ξ ∂ξ
The shape of the enrichment function given by
(23)
Equation (27) is shown in Figure 9b. With this modifica-
tion, the modified enrichment function not only retains
C 1 continuity, but also satisfies the conditions stated
in Equations (21) and (22). The original purpose of
SGFEM is to improve the conditioning of the stiffness
matrix by orthogonalizing the solution space approxi-
mated with the GFEM shape functions while keeping
the accuracy of the solution as discussed in Babuška
and Banerjee (2012) and Gupta et al. (2013). Instead,
in our formulation, this concept is applied mainly for
the straightforward imposition of displacement bound-
ary conditions.
Finally, to accurately describe plastic deformation
of an element with multiple plastic regions, a com-
bined plastic enrichment function is proposed. Figure 10
shows the enlarged shape of the middle element of the
 Generalized finite element formulation of fiber beam elements for distributed plasticity 153

ment function for this element can be defined as

Bξ γ2 γ3
еBξ ξ
е B= B2 + B3
γ2 + γ3 + γ4 γ2 + γ3 + γ4
γ4
+ B4 . (29)
γ2 + γ3 + γ4

ξ
е
Here, B2 and B4 are the plastic enrichment function for
Bξ

Bξ
the description of the plastic regions #2 and #4, respec-

е
tively, and can be calculated using Equations (25) and
(27). B3 is the plastic enrichment function for the plas-
tic region #3 and can be calculated using Equation (19).
ξ In addition, γ2 , γ3 , and γ4 are the relative heights of the
plastic regions #2, #3, and #4, respectively, as defined in
ξ Equations (23) and (24).
From this definition, it can be seen that the contribu-
tion of each plastic enrichment to the combined func-
tion is determined in proportion with the relative height
of the corresponding plastic region. Also, notice that the
proposed enrichment function requires only the same
number of DOFs as in the case of a single plastic region
within an element. It can be adaptively computed on-
the-fly based on plastic deformation distribution at the
ξ
е
Bξ

previous loading step, as summarized in Algorithm 1.

Bξ

The plastic enrichment functions are consistently up-

е

dated at each integration point within an element.

Algorithm 1.
Bξ
е е Adaptive construction of plastic enrichment functions
ξ Bξ ξ
in relation with a stress state.
ξ

Fig. 9. Enrichment function for a plastic hinge at a node: (a)

original function and (b) modified function based on the
SGFEM concept.

3.2.3 Imposition of displacement boundary conditions.

Fig. 10. Beam element with multiple plastic regions.
three-span beam structure presented in Figure 4. In the
figure, h e2 , h e3 , and h e4 denote the heights of the elastic
stress state region at the onset locations of the plastic
regions #2, #3, and #4, respectively. The plastic enrich-
As discussed in Section 3.2.1, the GFEM approxima-
tion expressed in Equation (14) allows that the DOFs
corresponding to polynomial enrichments with i = 1
and 2 ( w 0β1 and w 0β2 ) can have the physical meaning of
displacement and rotation at node β, respectively. For
example, if the scaled monomials up to p = 3 are used
as the enrichment functions at all nodes of the domain,
due to Equation (15), the GFEM approximation of
vertical displacement at node β can be simplified as in
Equation (30). Similarly, due to Equations (15), (16),
(21), and (22), the approximated rotation of the fiber
beam model can be computed by Equation (31).
154 Park, Kim & Kim

Therefore, if h β is set to be 1, w 0β2 has the physical

meaning of the rotation at node β. Due to this feature,
the proposed GFEM enables the straightforward im-
position of displacement boundary conditions without
using special techniques such as the penalty and La-
grange multiplier methods (Szabo and Babuška, 1991).

N

w(xβ ) = ϕα (xβ ) L αi (xβ ) w 0αi + Bα (xβ )L αi (xβ ) w αi
E

α=1 i∈I(α)


= ϕβ (xβ ) L βi (xβ ) w 0βi + Bβ (xβ )L βi (xβ ) w βi
E

i∈I(β)
   2
xβ − xβ xβ − xβ
= 1 · 1 · w 0β1 + · w 0β2 + · w 0β3
hβ hβ
 3 
xβ − xβ
+ · w 0β3 = w 0β1
hβ (30)

dw(xβ )
θ (xβ ) =
dx

N
dϕα (xβ )

= L αi (xβ ) w 0αi + Bα (xβ )L αi (xβ ) w αi
E
dx
α=1 i∈I(α)

N d

+ ϕα (xβ ) L αi (xβ ) w 0αi + Bα (xβ )L αi (xβ ) w αi
E
dx
α=1 i∈I(α)

 dL βi (xβ ) dBβ (xβ )

= ϕβ (xβ ) w 0βi + L βi (xβ ) w βi
E Fig. 11. Numerical integration scheme: (a) two-dimensional
dx dx elements cut by a crack interface and (b) fiber beam element
i∈I(β)

with a plastic enrichment.
dL βi (xβ ) E  dL βi (xβ )

+ Bβ (xβ ) w βi =1· w 0βi
dx dx integration domain is employed for the entire element.
i∈I(β)
 

2  For the same reason, the fiber beam element with the
w 0β2 2 w 0β3 xβ − xβ
= + · +
hβ hβ hβ
w 0β2
= (31)
hβ
3.3 Implementation issues
As in other Generalized/eXtended finite element ap-
plications with interfaces (Kim et al., 2010; Sukumar
et al., 2000), the numerical integration of elements with
the plastic enrichment defined by Equations (19) and
(25) requires the subdivision of integration elements.
Figure 11a illustrates the numerical integration scheme
for two-dimensional elements cut by a crack interface
(Fries and Belytschko, 2010). In this case, the crack is
described by Heaviside enrichment function, and the
GFEM shape functions with this enrichment satisfy only
C 0 requirement at the location of crack interface. As a
result, the standard integration rule such as the Gauss
quadrature cannot exactly integrate stiffness compo-
nents computed with these shape functions if a single
3 w 0β4 xβ − xβ plastic enrichment needs to be subdivided at the bound-
·
hβ hβ ary of the yield zone, at which only C 1 requirement is
satisfied, and a numerical integration rule must be ap-
plied to each of the subdivided integration elements as
illustrated in Figure 11b. For the numerical integration
of fiber beam elements, the Lobatto quadrature rule
(Heath, 2002) is adopted in this study.
4 NUMERICAL EXPERIMENTS
Three representative computational examples are em-
ployed in this study: simple beam, three-span continu-
ous beam, and arbitrary multispan beam. It can be noted
that a plastic region is initiated within a span for a simple
beam, whereas plastic regions are initiated in multiple
locations for multispan beams. The effectiveness of the
proposed GFEM framework is presented by compar-
ing it with the standard FEM. In the proposed GFEM
framework, the cubic polynomial enrichment functions
are employed before reaching yield stress within a
domain. When yielding of a material is initiated, a
 Generalized finite element formulation of fiber beam elements for distributed plasticity 155

Fig. 12. Geometry of a simply supported beam.

plastic enrichment function is introduced and updated

by evaluating the stress state in the previous loading in-
crement. Furthermore, when plastic regions appear in
multiple locations in an element, the corresponding en-
richment function is adaptively constructed on the basis , , , , , ,
of plastic regions without introducing additional DOFs.
The tolerance of the norm of the normalized residual
vector is selected as 10−10 in the Newton–Raphson al-
gorithm. For the estimation of the average relative dis-
placement error, the almost exact vertical displacement
along a beam at the kth loading step (ur e f ,k ) is obtained
using the finite element analysis with 300 elements per
span. Then, the average relative error (eavg,k ) of the dis-
placement at the kth loading increment is defined as
||uk − ur e f ,k ||
eavg,k = (32)
||ur e f ,k ||
where uk is the displacement along a beam at the kth
loading step. The number of evaluation points along
a beam is 101 with the uniform spacing of evaluation
points. , , , , , ,

4.1 Simply supported beam

The geometry of a simply supported beam example is
shown in Figure 12. The length (L) of a beam is 6 m with
a rectangular cross-section. The width (b) and the height
(h) of the cross-section are the same at a value of 0.5
m. A concentrated load is applied with the distance of
4.5 m from the left support. The material is assumed to
be steel, and thus a one-dimensional isotropic hardening
model is employed for the simplicity. The yield stress
(σ y ) and the Young’s modulus (E) are 420 MPa and
210 GPa, respectively, whereas the elastoplastic tangent
modulus is defined as α E (e.g., α = 0.1). Two cases of
generalized finite element discretization are employed
in this example. First, one element is used, which leads
to the formation of a plastic region within an element.
Next, two elements are used, while a node is placed
where the load is applied. Thus, in this case, a plastic
region is initiated on the boundary of the element (or
finite element node).
To demonstrate the effects of the plastic length en-
richments on computational results, the computational
results with the enrichment functions are compared
Fig. 13. Comparison between the classical fiber model
(FEM) and the generalized fiber model (GFEM) with the (a)
one-element case and (b) two-element case.
with the results using standard FEM. When one element
is used with the updated plastic enrichment functions,
the number of elements for FEM is selected as 5, 7, 9,
and 11 with the uniform spacing of nodes. Figure 13a
demonstrates that the average displacement error for
GFEM is higher than standard FEM within the elastic
region, because a small number of elements is used for
GFEM. After displaying plastic deformation, standard
FEM leads to an increase in the error. For the proposed
GFEM framework, the plastic length functions
(Equation (19)) are enriched at the onset of
plastic deformation, and thus a decrease in the er-
ror is observed. It can be noted that the error for
GFEM with a single element is generally lower error
than for standard FEM up to 9–11 elements.
For the two-element case of GFEM, a node is placed
at a loading point, and the plastic enrichment function
(Equations (25) and (27)) is applied at the onset of
156 Park, Kim & Kim

plastic deformation. Then, the number of elements for

FEM is selected as 4, 8, 12, and 16 with the uniform spac-
ing. Both GFEM and FEM reproduce the exact solution
within an elastic range, because a node is placed at the
loading point (see Figure 13b). After onset of plastic de-
formation, the error of the two-element case is approx-
imately equivalent to that of standard FEM with 16 ele-
ments.
In addition, the boundary between the elastic and
plastic regions within a beam, named as the isoyield
stress line, is evaluated. The analytical solution of the
isoyield stress line for a simply supported beam is ob-
tained from the equilibrium condition of the external
moment and the internal moment. The plastic region is
bh 2 σ y
initiated when the applied load is equal to 6(1−xc /L)x c
. At
the onset of the yield stress, the plastic zone is located at
the loading point. After reaching the yielding, the size of
the plastic region increases according to the increase of
Fig. 14. Boundary between the elastic region and the plastic
the applied load. Then, the positions of the left and right
region, that is, isoyield stress line.
boundaries between the elastic region and the plastic re-
gion are given as
the isoyield stress line, even when only one element is
bh 2 σ y utilized. The relative error of the plastic region height
xe1 = (33)
6(1 − xc /L)P is only 2.4% for GFEM. However, standard FEM is
and limited in accurately representing an isoyield stress line
when the number of elements is relatively small. The
bh 2 σ y relative errors of FEM using 2, 3, and 4 elements are
xe2 = L − (34)
6(xc /L)P 101.3%, 22.0%, and 19.6%, respectively.
where the plastic region exists in between xe1 and xe2 . The effects of the plastic length enrichment updat-
The physical positions of xe1 and xe2 correspond to the ing scheme are investigated by comparing the results
natural coordinates of ξ1 and ξ2 in Figure 6, respec- of the updated plastic length with the results of a fixed
tively. Within the plastic region, xe1 < x < xe2 , the dis- plastic length. For a fixed plastic length, the ratio of
tance from the neutral axis to the position of the yield the plastic region in the enrichment function to a beam
stress (y p ) is expressed as element length, named as a plastic length ratio [γ p =
    (ξ2 − ξ1 )/2], is arbitrarily selected as 0.01, 0.1, 0.2, and
h α 3
 
y p (x) = 3
1+ 1 + p(x) +
3
1 − 1 + p(x) (35) 0.3, and the loading point is considered as the midpoint
2 1−α
of the plastic region. Alternatively, the position of the
where a variable p(x) is defined as plastic region is identified and updated on the basis of


3 the stress within a member, as discussed in Section 3.2.2.
1−α 2 2 x
p(x) = −1 (36) The average error versus the applied load relations are
α 3(1 − α) xe1 plotted for the fixed plastic length and the updated plas-
and tic length, as shown in Figure 15. Onset of plastic defor-

2 
3 mation is observed at the applied load of approximately
1−α 2 L−x
p(x) =
α 3(1 − α) L − xe2
for xe1 < x ≤
 xc and xc ≤ x < xe2 , respectively. It can be
noted that 1 + p(x) can lead to a complex number,
while the complex numbers in the cubic root cancel each
other out.
The computational results of the isoyield stress
line are compared with the analytical solution,
Equation (35), when the applied load is 12,000
kN. Figure 14 demonstrates that GFEM with the plastic
enrichment functions provides a good approximation of
−1 (37) 8,400 kN. For the one-element case, at the initial stage
of plastic deformation, the results with the smaller value
for the plastic length ratio, γ p = 0.01, provide less error
than those with the larger value for the plastic length
ratio, γ p = 0.3. When the applied load is greater than a
certain level, the differences in error according to the
plastic length ratio are not significant.
For the two-element case, the error levels are sim-
ilar among different plastic length ratios at the ini-
tial stage of plastic deformation. This is because a
node is placed where plastic deformation occurs in this
 Generalized finite element formulation of fiber beam elements for distributed plasticity
, , , , , ,
, , , , , ,
Fig. 15. Effects of the plastic length updating scheme on
relative error for (a) one-element case and (b) two-element
case.
example. Although the applied load increases, a larger
value of the plastic length ratio can provide a better ap-
proximation than the smaller values. For the updated
plastic length, the error level is approximately 10−4 to
10−3 and 10−5 to 10−4 for the one- and two-element
cases, respectively, and does not increase abruptly with
increasing load. Thus, the proposed framework accu-
rately captures the reference solutions.
The convergence and computational cost of the
proposed GFEM framework are investigated to
demonstrate the effectiveness of the generalized fiber
element modeling. The total average relative error is
evaluated by averaging the relative errors of each load-
ing increment. The rate of convergence for standard
FEM is similar to that for GFEM without the plastic
enrichment, as shown in Figure 16a. When the plastic
157
Fig. 16. Convergence and computational cost of the
proposed GFEM framework: (a) convergence of the
displacement error and (b) number of total iterations.
enrichment function is used in GFEM, one obtains a
significantly lower error than for standard FEM with
the same number of elements. It can be noted that the
error level of the proposed GFEM with one element is
similar to that of standard FEM with eight elements,
whereas the error level for the two-element case is
similar to the error of FEM using 16 elements. The
DOFs for the one- and two-element cases are 16 and
24, respectively, whereas the DOFs of FEM with 8 and
16 elements are 18 and 34, respectively. To obtain the
same level of accuracy, GFEM with plastic enrichment
leads to less DOFs than standard FEM.
158 Park, Kim & Kim

Fig. 17. Geometry and boundary conditions of a three-span

continuous beam.

To estimate the computational cost of GFEM with

the plastic enrichment function, the number of total it-
erations in the Newton–Raphson algorithm is utilized.
In the Newton–Raphson algorithm, the initial values of
the DOFs associated with the enrichment functions are
set to zero when a plastic enrichment function is in- , , , , , ,
troduced, whereas the initial values are obtained from
the previous loading step when the plastic enrichment
function is updated. Then, the numbers of iterations in
each loading increment are summed. One notes that
measuring the actual run-time is not practical in this
study, because the number of elements is relatively
small and GFEM with the enrichment function is devel-
oped as an in-house code. The number of total iterations
versus the number of elements are plotted in Figure 16b
for the four cases: standard FEM, GFEM without plas-
tic enrichment, GFEM with the one-element case, and
GFEM with the two-element case. Increasing the num-
ber of elements does not lead to a significant increase in
the number of iterations for both FEM and GFEM. In
addition, GFEM with plastic enrichment results in less
number of total iterations than FEM to have the same
, , , , , ,
level of relative error.

4.2 Three-span continuous beam

To investigate the effects of multiple plastic regions in
an element on computational results, an example of a
three-span continuous beam is employed. The length of
a span is 6 m with a rectangular cross-section of 0.5 m
by 0.5 m, and a concentrate load is applied at the cen-
ter of each span (Figure 17). The bilinear elastoplastic
constitutive relation is employed with the elastic mod-
ulus of 210 GPa and the yield stress of 420 MPa, which
are the same material properties as in the simple beam
example.
The two cases of GFEM are utilized, that is, one- and
two-element cases within a span. For the one-element
case, one element is used per span, and thus the num-
ber of elements is 3. For the two-element case, a node
is placed where a concentrated force is applied, which
leads to six elements for the three-span continuous
beam. Then, plastic deformation occurs in multiple po-
sitions within an element because the maximum positive
and negative moments are expected inside a span and
on supports, respectively. To capture plastic deforma-
Fig. 18. Comparison between the average relative error of
GFEM and that of standard FEM for the three-span
continuous beam: (a) one-element case and (b) two-element
case.
tion within a span, an enrichment function is adaptively
constructed on-the-fly based on the state of plastic de-
formation, as discussed in Section 3.2.2.
The results of GFEM are compared with those of
standard FEM, as shown in Figure 18. GFEM pro-
vides larger error than the standard FEM in the elas-
tic range, whereas the error of GFEM decreases after
onset of plastic deformation because of the addition of
enrichment functions. For the standard FEM, the error
tends to increase after onset of plastic deformation, as
expected. In addition, the error of the one-element case
is approximately equivalent to the FE analysis with 21
elements (i.e., seven elements per span), whereas the
error of the two-element case is almost equivalent to
the FE analysis with 36 elements (i.e., 12 elements per
 Generalized finite element formulation of fiber beam elements for distributed plasticity
Fig. 19. Evolution of the isoyield lines according to the load:
(a) the standard FEM using 300 elements per span, (b)
GFEM with the one-element case and (c) GFEM with the
two-element case.
span). One notes that those observations are consistent
with the simple beam example although multiple plastic
regions are introduced in an element.
In addition, the isoyield lines obtained from FEM
and GFEM are illustrated when the applied loads are
10,800, 14,100, and 24,900 kN (Figure 19). To obtain
an almost exact isoyield stress line, FE analysis is per-
formed using 300 elements per span. GFEM well cap-
tures the smooth isoyield lines according to the loading
steps although only one or two elements are utilized per
span, as shown in Figures 19b and c, respectively. The
good agreement is achieved by the adaptive construc-
tion of enrichment functions with respect to the forma-
tion of the five plastic regions. Table 1 summarizes the
plastic regions and corresponding plastic enrichment
functions for the one-element case. Plastic deformation
is introduced at the plastic regions #1 and #5, and thus
the element-plastic enrichment functions, for example,
B1 , B5 , are included for the left and right spans, re-
spectively. While the external load increases, additional
plastic regions are initiated at the two internal supports
(i.e., plastic regions #2 and #4). Then, the combi-
nation of the element-plastic enrichment functions
(Equation (19)) and the node-plastic enrichment
functions (Equation (25)) is utilized for the two side
spans. For the midspan, the combination of the two
node-plastic enrichment functions (e.g., B2 , B4 ) is used.
Finally, the plastic deformation occurs at the center of
the midspan, and thus the combination of the node-
159
and element-plastic enrichment functions is utilized in
the midspan (e.g., B2 , B3 , B4 ), which corresponds to
Equation (29).
4.3 Arbitrary multispan beam
To demonstrate the generality and consistency of the
proposed GFEM framework, an arbitrary multispan
beam is shown in Figure 20a. The span length and the
applied load are arbitrary selected with a rectangular
cross-section of 0.5 m by 0.5 m. The elastic modulus and
the yield stress are 210 GPa and 420 MPa, respectively,
which are the same material properties as in the pre-
vious examples. The increment of the distributed load
(q), the concentrated load (P), and the moment (M)
for each loading step are 3,000 kN/m, 6,000 kN, and
25,000 kN-m, respectively. While the applied load in-
creases, plastic regions appear at multiple locations. For
instance, Figure 20b illustrates the locations and forma-
tion order of the plastic regions. To solve the example
using GFEM with plastic enrichment, nodes are only
placed at the supports and loading points, and thus the
numbers of elements and nodes are 7 and 8, respec-
tively. For FEM, each span has the same number of el-
ements with the uniform spacing.
The error of the proposed GFEM framework is com-
pared with the standard FEM. Figure 21 illustrates that
the error variation of this example is similar to those of
the simple beam and the three-span continuous beam.
The error of the proposed GFEM framework using
seven elements is approximately similar to the error of
FEM with 60 elements. The corresponding DOFs are
64 and 122 for GFEM and FEM, respectively. In sum-
mary, one can reduce the size of a system of equations in
half using GFEM with the plastic enrichment functions
while achieving the same level of accuracy compared to
standard FEM.
The condition numbers are evaluated at each load-
ing increment for GFEM with and without the plastic
enrichment functions using seven elements. Figure 22
demonstrates that the condition numbers are the same
within the elastic region, whereas they increase when
the plastic enrichments are introduced, as expected.
The computational cost is estimated using the num-
ber of total iterations. Figure 23 illustrates the number
of total iterations for the three cases: standard FEM
(case I), GFEM without plastic enrichment (case II),
and GFEM with plastic enrichment (case III). Similar
to the simple beam, the standard FEM and the GFEM
without plastic enrichment provide similar numbers of
total iterations with respect to the number of elements.
The number of total iterations for GFEM with plastic
enrichment is approximately 10–20% higher than those
of the other two cases. In addition, Table 2 shows the
160 Park, Kim & Kim

Table 1
Combination of plastic enrichment functions according to the loading stages for the one-element case

Load (kN) Plastic regions No. of DOFs Left span Midspan Right span
0–9,900 − 16 − − −
9,900–11,100 #1, #5 32 B1 0 B5
11,100–23,400 #1, #2, #4, #5 32 γ1
B + γ γ+γ
γ1 +γ2 1
2
B2 γ2
B
γ2 +γ4 2
+ γ4
B
γ2 +γ4 4
γ4
B + γ γ+γ
γ4 +γ5 4
5
B5
1 2 4 5
γ1 γ2 γ2 γ3 γ4 γ5
23,400–30,000 #1∼ #5 32 γ +γ
B1 + γ +γ
B2 B
γ2 +γ3 +γ4 2
+ B
γ2 +γ3 +γ4 3 γ +γ
B4 + γ +γ
B5
1 2 1 2 4 5 4 5
+ γ +γγ4 +γ B4
2 3 4

Fig. 20. (a) Geometry and boundary conditions of an arbitrary multispan beam and (b) the formation order of the plastic regions.

numbers of iterations for the three cases according to
the formation of plastic regions. Six plastic regions are
formed in this example, as indicated in Figure 20b. The
number of elements for FEM is selected as 60 because
the error of FEM using 60 elements is similar to that
of GFEM with the plastic enrichment functions. Within
the elastic range (e.g., stage 1), the number of iterations
is one, as expected. After the first plastic deformation
occurs in an internal support (stage 2), the number of it-
erations for each loading increment is about 2–3 for the
three cases. In the subsequent plastic region formation
(stages 3–7), the number of iterations for each loading
increment is about 2–4. GFEM with the plastic enrich-
ment functions provides only a few more iterations at
maximum than standard FEM for each stage. In sum-
mary, to obtain the similar level of accuracy, the total
number of iterations for the proposed GFEM frame-
work is 10% higher than standard FEM, whereas the
size of a system of equations of GFEM is almost half of
that of standard FEM.
5 SUMMARY AND CONCLUDING REMARKS
In this article, a generalized fiber beam element formu-
lation that can accurately capture the formation of plas-
tic deformation using a coarse mesh was proposed. The
strong gradient of displacement in a fiber beam element
near plastic regions can be accurately described using
a special plastic enrichment function. The two types of
the plastic enrichment functions were suggested for the
cases where the plastic hinges are located within an ele-
ment and at a node, respectively. A combination of the
two plastic enrichment functions is proposed to capture
multiple plastic regions in an element. In this approach,
the optimal shape of the plastic enrichment function can
be adaptively updated by reflecting plastic deformation
at the previous loading step, and thus the accuracy of
the nonlinear solution can be enhanced. The effective-
ness of the proposed method was investigated in terms
of accuracy and computational cost through several nu-
merical experiments. The main conclusions of this arti-
cle are as follows:
r The proposed GFEM framework can accurately pre-
dict the nonlinear solution of fiber beam elements
with reduced computational cost compared to the
standard FEM. The accuracy of the GFEM solution is
comparable to that of the standard FEM with eight or
nine times more elements. For the same level of accu-
racy, the total number of iterations required to obtain
 Generalized finite element formulation of fiber beam elements for distributed plasticity 161

Fig. 22. Effects of the plastic enrichment functions on the

condition number.

Fig. 21. Relative error comparison between the GFEM and

the standard FEM according to (a) the loading step and (b)
the number of elements.
Fig. 23. Number of total iterations for GFEM and FEM.

the GFEM solution is almost equivalent to that of the

standard FEM solution;
r The proposed GFEM enables the straightforward im-
position of displacement boundary conditions with-
out using special techniques such as the penalty and
Lagrange multiplier methods;
r The proposed plastic length updating scheme can re-
sult in the nonlinear solution, of which accuracy is
equivalent to or higher than those of the solutions
with fixed plastic length ratios;
r The proposed framework is valid for arbitrary multi-
span beams, which leads to multiple plastic regions
in an element. Such behavior is captured by adap-
tively reconstructing the plastic enrichment functions
without introducing additional DOFs. The proposed
GFEM is highly effective especially in estimating the
nonlinear solution at loading stages with plastic de-
formation in a member.
The GFEM framework proposed in this study can
be extended and applied to the analysis of two-
or three-dimensional frame members. However, the
applicability of the proposed plastic enrichment func-
tion to the simulation of beams or columns subjected
to more complex boundary conditions or with softening
material behavior requires further in-depth study.
162 Park, Kim & Kim

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the method and its applications, International Journal of
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Taiwan, Disasters, 28(1), 63–81. where c1 = b3 /4, c2 = −3b3 /4, c3 = 0, and c4 = b3 .