We generally do pipeline/ OSBL stress analysis. Our pipeline alignments are not in X-Z direction Y-Axis is up. It is generally having some angles w.r.t to X-Z axis. We are doing above ground pipeline stress analysis. When we specify the guide as 2mm gap then we see some values more than 2mm in X-Z direction. For the guide forces we had to refer the restraint report not the restraint summary. My query is for the foundation design shall we give the restraint summary to civil engineer for supports design, We are facing problem because the alignment is not along the axis but is offset configuration. Either shall we use restraint report for support design or we rotate the model in true x-z plane to get the axial & lateral forces in true x-z axis. Please advice

Yes you can see movements in "X" and/or "Z" that exceed your gap size. There are two situations where this is possible:

1) When reviewing the displacement report in an Expansion case you're looking at a displacement range, not true displacements. So in the one load case if the displacement was +1.5 (note, less than 2), and the other load case was -1.5 (note, less than 2) then the range is 1.5 - (-1.5) = 3.0.

2) If the line is skewed (as in your case), perhaps the line moves axially 100mm, but stays in the exact center of your gap. The X and Z displacement values will show numbers way bigger than your gap. However, if you resolve these into the gap direction, you'll find the displacement is zero.

There is a utility on the website that can assist you in converting displacements and forces from the "Global Coordinate" system to a "Local Coordinate" system. You can find this utility (Global to Local) on the CAESAR II download page, in the "Utilities" secion. There is an article in one of our newsletters discussing the useage of this utility. Click here to bring up this newsletter - the article starts on page 15.

We design above ground cross country pipelines which are skewed all over the place.

We output the CAESAR II restraint reactions into excel and then run an excel macro which we have written that will resolve the global forces and moments into local force and moments. It works very well and is very quick, we might take half a day to export and manipulate a couple of hundred support loads.