Improved refined plastic hinge analysis accounting for local buckling and lateral-torsional buckling

In this paper, a conventional refined plastic hinge analysis is improved to account for the effects of local buckling and lateral-torsional buckling. The degradation of flexural strength caused by these effects is implicitly considered using practical LRFD equation. The second-order effect is captured using stability functions to minimize modeling and solution time. An incremental-iterative scheme based on the generalized displacement control method is employed to solve the nonlinear equilibrium equations. A computer program is developed to predict the second-order inelastic behavior of space steel frames. To verify the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed program, the obtained results are compared with the existing results and those generated using the commercial finite element package ABAQUS. It can be concluded that the proposed program proves to be a reliable and effective tool for daily use in engineering design.