How does Caesar account for pipe bend thinning on in the extrados of the pipe on induction bends. B31.3 304.2.1 covers the minimum thickness requirements for the finished bend and Caesar provides a warning when you drop below this value however this does not really help in Caesar for determining expansion stresses.

If you reduce the wall thickness at the bend the flexibility of the bend goes up and your stresses remain roughly the same. This does not reflect reality as what really happens is the intrdos gets thicker and the extrados gets thinner so the average flexibility probably remains similar but the stress level in the thinner material would be higher as there is less material to distriute the loading.

So my current thought is to check the stress in the bends and increase the value by 10% (our maximum thinning in our standard) then compare those values against the allowable.

Does anyone have any thoughts on how to approch this. Am I missing a setting in Caesar that can take this into account?