Thank you for your replies.
Being the first time that I have to design an expansion loop, I tried to reason in this way:
I have a 1000 meters pipeline long (12"), with design Temperature=85C and installation temperature=21 C.
I calculated the thermal expansion of 1000 m pipeline= alpha*L*DT= about 750mm.
Now I divided the total length of 1000 m in five sections (200 meters each one); in each section i put an expansion loop(Finally I will have 4 expansion loops).In this way I divided the total expansion for each sections (each expansion loop will absorb 750/5= 150mm of expansion,75mm one side and 75mm on the other side).
I run the analysis by Caesar, I have a axial displacements lower than 75 mm (for operating case) and 130 mm (operating case+seism), and the loads at the guides lower than 1 ton.
Are these displacements reasonable? or I have to increase/decrease the number of expansion loops?
Thank you