The strain-smoothed element (SSE) method has been developed for linear and nonlinear structural analysis. The SSE method constructs a smoothed strain field within an element by using the strains of adjacent elements. The method has been applied to various finite elements such as 3-node triangular and 4-node quadrilateral 2D solid elements, 3-node triangular shell elements and 4-node tetrahedral 3D solid elements. The performance of the SSE method has been demonstrated in various linear and nonlinear structural analysis. We introduce the SSE method and present numerical examples to verify its performance.