In Gulf countries there are many flowlines routed almost straight from well heads to Gathering Centers (GC) in which some portion of pipeline is buried for road crossing.The problem is many flowline lifts up and falls down from the support due to pipe (thermal) expansion since the flowlines are not provided with expansion loops, bends and other device to absorb the thermal expansion.

As per theory, the free thermal expansion for the horizontal pipe is more along the axial direction and expansion in the remaining directions are negligible. Also vast thermal force is developed if the free end is fully restrained.

A Person from Client side would like to design a special support resembles spring can support to over come the above problem.

In practice, if two ends of a straight line pipe is fully restatined, a huge thermal force is developed at the restrained end but it tries to expand in the other direction say across or upwards orelse downwards. Though resting supports are placed at regular intervals under the pipe, downward movement is completely arrested. If some supports are replaced with spring supports at the bottom of the pipe, it might absorb the thermal expansion so there is a less chance for the pipe to move laterally. Is this possible without Loops?

The above message is from our client. They want us to show the same using Caesar-II, but as Caeasr-II is fully developed theoritically, I am not able to produce the result as practical case. Is it better to use FEM to analyze such situation? Please clarify if I am wrong?