ABSTRACT
The moving node strategy was presented for the elasto-plastic analysis of frames subjected to loads including linearly varying distributed load (Wong 1996). In addition, certain practical applications of the moving node strategy were carried out in the second-order inelastic analysis of two-dimensional and three-dimensional steel frames (Kim et al. 2004, Kim & Choi 2005). However, the research work above on the intermediate plastic hinge was only for the static analysis of frames. In actual practice, the plastic hinges are formed when the frame is subjected to strong dynamic excitations such as earthquakes. Therefore the local behaviour of the intermediate plastic hinges and the global responses of frames under distributed loads need to be studied in detail.
