“…Some research efforts have been conducted to determine joint flexibility. For an optimal automotive body design, conceptual joint models incorporating elastic rotational and torsional springs into a finite element beam model of an automotive frame have been proposed (Borowski et al, 1975;El-Sayed, 1989;Cameron et al, 1997Cameron et al, , 2000Lee and Nikolaidis, 1998). In addition, semi-rigid framing of a rotational joint with a moment-rotation relationship has been developed to simulate the actual structural response of steel frames as elasto-plastic hinges (Chen, 2000;Faella et al, 1999).…”