In this paper, the developments of functionally graded materials and graded finite elements are reviewed. By taking into account of thermal and plastic behaviours of materials, a thermo-elasto-plastic graded finite element method has been derived. The method, being capable of describing spatially varying material properties, has been implemented in the commercial finite element code ABAQUS by using user-defined material subroutines for solving engineering problems. To illustrate the applicability of the method, a case example has been preformed to study the mechanical response of a ceramic-FGMs-metal sandwich structure. The merits of the method have discussed on the basis of the numerical results. Further developments of the method would be useful for skeletal muscle simulation.