Over the course of my piping flexibility career (I started in the "heady days of punch cards & green lined paper"), I have developed a few realizations regarding cold spring:

1. Cold spring is a "paper solution" when applied to piping loads on equipment. It is hard to predict where the loads will actually be after a few cycles.

2. Don't even think of using cold spring to reduce stresses in the piping system.

3. The only remaining application where cold spring is defensible is in controlling deflections. Here I am talking about controlling large deflections (>>1") such as occur in pipe racks and pipeways. This can be reliably measured in the field when creating the cold spring where as a specified starting stress level is difficult if not impossible to actually measure.

Deflection control (i.e. creating enough room to allow piping to move without interferring with other piping in the rack) is the only cold spring application I would consider.