Paper Title
Generalized High-Order Nonlinear Frame Elements

Abstract
The truncated error for shape function order has been identified as an influentialfactor that must be carried outfor frame structural analyses.That fact implied thatgeneralized procedures had to be posed in this work tobe able to use elements withdifferent functionorders.Moreover, in order to obtain more realistic results, nonlinearelements with plastic length were developed since no previous references have worked with these kinds of nonlinear high-order elements. The solution for this last problem was to use a set ofsigmoid functionsin the stiffness matrix integral.Other concerns were caused by the Runge phenomenon and spurioushigh frequencies in nonlinear analysis using high-order elements. Thosedifficulties werefixedusing generalized alpha, smoothertransition to the nonlinear range, Chebyshev node distributions in some cases, and p-adaptive methods.Another contribution of this work was establishingan appropriate manner of obtaining the maximum permissible error in p-adaptive methods.Finally, three examples were made to prove the robustness of the formulation presented here and to show howinfluential this error can be. Keywords - Frame Elements, High-Order Elements, Nonlinear Elements, P-Adaptive.