A nonlinear dynamic finite element technique is developed to analyze the elastoplastic dynamic response of singlelayer reticulated shells under strong earthquake excitation, in which the nonlinear three-dimensional beam elements are employed. An elastoplastic tangent stiffness matrix of three-dimensional beam element is derived by using the updated Lagrangian formulation, in which the isotropic hardening model-the Von-Mises yield criterion and the Prandtl-Reuss flow relations are applied to this study. This procedure considers both geometric and material nonlinearities. In this paper, several condensation and reduction techniques in matrices and degrees of freedom are used to simplify the analysis. An incremental-iterative technique based on the Newmark direct integration method and the modified Newton-Raphson method is employed for obtaining the solutions of the nonlinear dynamic equilibrium equations. Moreover, an accurate method is developed to compute the large rotations of space structures. As a numerical example, the elastoplastic dynamic response of a single-layer reticulated shell under strong seismic excitation is investigated. It is shown through the numerical example that the method developed in this paper is efficient for the nonlinear dynamic response analysis and plastic design of space structures. 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.