Previous Research

Concentrated Plasticity Model

Two-component and one-component models are some of the ear- liest models proposed for lumped plasticity. Clough and Johnston (1966)
suggested the two-component model in which a linear elas- tic member in parallel with an elastic perfectly-plastic member are considered and
the plastic deformation is concentrated in the plastic hinges at the ends of the element. The highly significant short- coming of this model is
that it does not take stiffness degradation into account. To tackle this problem, Giberson (1967) proposed the one-component model, which
consists of two nonlinear rotational springs in which the inelastic deformation of the element is lumped in both and the element between them
is perfectly elastic. The major advantage of this model is that the end deformation of the member completely depends on the end springs of the
element; therefore, this model is able to assign any moment-rotation hysteresis model to the spring. The weak spot in the model is that it ignores
the effect of curvature distribution on the member-end rotation.
Giberson (1967) compared the one-component and two- component models and showed that the one-component model is the more
versatile of the two. Al-Haddad and Wight (1988) modified the one-component model by changing the location of the plastic hinges at the
ends of the member. Aoyama and Sugano (1968) ex- tended the two-component model by dividing each element into four parallel elements
consisting of an elastic member and three elasto- plastic members in parallel. Otani and Sozen (1972) put forward the connected two-
cantilever model. In this model, the member con- sists of two imaginary cantilevers. The main limitation of this model is the assumption of a
fixed point of contraflexure in the element. Mahin and Bertero (1976) reviewed the various ductility factor definitions in the earthquake-
resistant design. They proved that, be- cause the two-component model substantially underestimates the post-yielding stiffness of a member,
the seismic response of the structure will not be predicted accurately. To evaluate the effect of different hysteretic models, Anderson and
Townsend (1977) con- sidered four types of hysteretic models. They concluded that the trilinear degrading connection model had the highest
accuracy. As an option for concentrated plasticity, Kunnath and Reinhorn (1989) proposed a lumped plasticity model that was used in
IDARC 2D
(Park et al. 1987).
Dides and De la Llera (2005) compared the lumped plasticity models for the dynamic analysis of building structures. They con- cluded that
the concentrated plasticity models are efficient tools for nonlinear dynamic analysis of structures and are usually more ap- propriate for steel
than concrete structures. Inel and Ozmen (2006) studied the effects of plastic-hinge properties on nonlinear analysis of RC buildings. They
showed that the user should be aware of using default-hinges and user-hinges in analyses because the mis- use of default-hinge properties may
bring about unreasonable displacement capacities for existing structures.
Berry et al. (2008) presented new models for predicting seismic performance, including damage to ductile bridge columns. In this model,
to define plastic-hinge length, column length, and a measure
of anchorage bond stress demand are considered. Alva and de Cresce El (2010) applied a lumped dissipation model in nonlinear analysis of
RC structures. They considered the dissipation of en- ergy of the RC members as a consequence of concrete damage and steel reinforcement
plasticity. To simplify things, it is supposed that energy dissipation is restricted to plastic hinges at the ends of the member, while the rest of
the member remains elastic. Birely et al. (2012) presented a model to simulate the nonlinear re- sponse of planar RC frames that includes all
sources of flexibility. They modeled nonlinearity by introducing a dual-hinge lumped- plasticity beam element comprising two rotational
springs in series. One spring simulates beam flexural response and the other simu- lates joint response.
Zhao et al. (2012) evaluated the plastic-hinge length in RC flexural members. They analytically considered the performance of the plastic-
hinge zone using the finite element method. Amorim et al. (2013) proposed a model of fracture based on lumped damage mechanics for RC
arches. In this model, concrete cracking and plastic yielding of the longitudinal reinforcements are concentrated in the plastic hinges. Rahai
and Nafari (2013) compared the lumped and distributed plasticity approaches in pushover analysis of a portland cement frame bridge. The
close correlation between out- comes illustrates the acceptable accuracy of the lumped plasticity approach for the nonlinear modeling of
nonprismatic bridge piers with hollow sections. Babazadeh et al. (2016) found that the length of the critical plastic region in slender RC bridge
columns is larger than what had been obtained from previous models, which had been developed for shorter columns.

Distributed Plasticity Model

Despite the simplicity of the aforementioned lump plasticity mod- els, they do not accurately represent the distribution of plasticity within
individual members of a frame because of the assumption of an intrinsic zero-length plastic zone. To overcome this drawback, discrete element
models have been proposed. In these models, the member can be subdivided into short line segments along the member and each short segment
is assigned a nonlinear hysteric characteristic. Nonlinear stiffness can be assigned within a segment or at the connection of two adjacent
segments. Wen and Janssen (1965) presented their models in this category and introduced a multi-spring model for dynamic analysis of a plane
frame. Powell (1975) put forward a degrading stiffness hysteresis model where shorter segments are recommended in a region of high moment
and longer segments in a low-moment region. Although these dis- crete element models are more accurate, they require more compu- tational
effort than other plasticity models.
Unlike the discrete plasticity models, continuous models have been developed using the prescribed distribution pattern of flexural flexibility
along the length of a member. The parabolic-inflection distribution (Takizawa 1973) and linear-inflection distribution (Park et al. 1987) models
fall into this category. In parabolic-inflection models, elastic flexibility at the inflection point is taken into ac- count, which is an interesting
concept for analyzing an inelastic member. Soleimani et al. (1979) considered the spread of inelastic deformation in a member. In this model,
inelastic deformation as a function of loading history spreads from the ends into the member while the rest of the beam remains elastic. Emori
and Schnobrich (1981) compared results obtained using the concentrated spring, multiple spring, and layer beam models. They assessed the
inelastic response of the RC structural elements and determined which model
relates to each element.
Meyer et al. (1983) developed a novel method of obtaining the stiffness of the plastic zone during reloading. Their model was extended by
Roufaiel and Meyer (1987) to consider the effect of shear and axial forces on flexural hysteretic behavior. The linear- inflection proposed by
Park et al. (1987) was introduced in the original version of IDARC 2D. Although the parabolic-inflection and linear-inflection models are
efficient for some members, their dependence on the location of inflection point is a drawback. To overcome this obstacle and improve plasticity
models, two spread plasticity models based on a linear flexibility distribution and a uni- form flexibility distribution have been proposed. In
both models, the flexibility varies only in inelastic zones while the rest of the member is elastic with constant flexibility (Kunnath and Reinhorn
1989).
Hajjar et al. (1998a) proposed a distributed plasticity model for cyclic analysis of concrete-filled steel tube beam-columns and composite
frames. They presented the constitutive formulation and cyclic analysis ability of a three-dimensional fiber-based distributed plasticity finite
element for square or rectangular concrete-filled steel tube beam-columns. They also used a distributed plasticity model for concrete-filled
steel tube beam-columns with interlayer slip (Hajjar et al. 1998b). Scott and Fenves (2006) presented a new plastic-hinge integration method
derived from the Gauss-Radau quadrature rule to overcome problems with nonobjective response caused by strain-softening behavior in
force-based beam-column finite elements. Lee and Filippou (2009) put forward an effective beam-column element with variable inelastic end
zones. Although the element uses only one monitoring section in each end of the inelastic zone of a structural member, the spread of inelastic
defor- mation under strain hardening response is considered in this model. Kim and Kurama (2008) used the spread plasticity model to re-
flect flexural nonlinearity. Zhao et al. (2011) used the finite element

method to investigate plastic-hinge length in RC flexural members. He and Zhong (2012) used the fiber section model to derive the

nonlinear relation of sectional deformation and internal forces and their interaction. Roh et al. (2012) proposed a power spread plas- ticity
model for inelastic analysis of RC structures and compared the suggested plasticity model with the linear plasticity model used in IDARC
2D. Kucukler et al. (2014) extended their stiffness reduc- tion to fully capture the detrimental influence of the spread of plas- ticity, residual
stress, and geometrical imperfections on the capacity of columns and beam-columns. Nguyen and Kim (2014) presented a displacement-
based finite element procedure for second-order spread-of-plasticity analysis of plane steel frames with nonlinear beam-to-column
connections under dynamic and seismic loading. Mazza (2014) proposed a distributed plasticity model to simu- late the biaxial behavior in
the nonlinear analysis of spatial framed
structures. Comparison of the outcomes of their model with refined fiber and lumped plasticity models confirms the validity of the model. Pan
et al. (2016) proposed a computationally efficient fiber beam-column element model to take reinforcement anchorage slip in the footing into
account. They used the equivalent plastic-hinge length of a cantilevered member for selecting the rational mesh size to consider the effect of
deformation localization in a displacement- based fiber model. He et al. (2016) studied the relationship between optimum element size and the
number of integration points. They evaluated the equivalent plastic-hinge length and correlated it to optimal element size. They improved on
some disadvantages of the force-based element and showed that both the local and global responses can be well predicted using their proposed
method. Habibi and Moharrami (2010) and Astroza et al. (2015) used spread plasticity models in their studies.

Proposed Spread Plasticity Model

Extended Formulation
The goal of this study was to develop a new plasticity formulation based on actual moment distribution for members that includes the effects
of lateral and gravity loading. To do so, if the element is divided into several parts having different flexural stiffnesses as shown in Fig. 1, the
rotation at each end can be obtained using the flexural and shear flexibilities as follows:

where f AA , f AB , and f BB = flexibility coefficients; θA0 and θB0 = rotations at the ends of the element; and MA0 and M B0 = correspond- ing moments.
Note that, in Fig. 1(c), because the sections along a RC element exhibit different flexibility characteristics depending on the degree of
inelasticity, the number of divided parts varies in the different steps of analysis. The degree of stiffness that can be allocated to each part
depends on the moment-curvature curve used. In Fig. 1(d), Mi, Vi, and Ni are the moment, shear, and axial forces of end i and θi, vi, and ui are
their rotation and deformation, respectively. The parameters of end j are similar to end i. The flexibility coefficients in Eq. (1) can be derived
using the unit load theory based on the principle of virtual work as
Fig.