The element energy projection (EEP) method for computation of super-convergent resulting in a one-dimensional finite element method (FEM) is successfully used to self-adaptive FEM analysis of various linear problems, based on which this paper presents a substantial extension of the whole set of technology to nonlinear problems. The main idea behind the technology transfer from linear analysis to nonlinear analysis is to use Newton’s method to linearize nonlinear problems into a series of linear problems so that the EEP formulation and the corresponding adaptive strategy can be directly used without the need for specific super-convergence formulation for nonlinear FEM. As a re-sult, a unified and general self-adaptive algorithm for nonlinear FEM analysis is formed. The proposed algorithm is found to be able to produce satisfactory finite element results with accuracy satisfying the user-preset error tolerances by maximum norm anywhere on the mesh. Taking the nonlinear ordinary differential equation (ODE) of second-order as the model problem, this paper describes the related fundamental idea, the imple-mentation strategy, and the computational algorithm. Representative numerical exam-ples are given to show the e?ciency, stability, versatility, and reliability of the proposed approach.