Well, my reference should have been to the Caesar Help screen for the "Type" field, which I believe is based on Table D300, Note 5, not Note 13. Thanks Dave more pointing out the incorrect reference.

Thanks everyone for your input.

The gist is: Some piping is modeled well by the beam element approach and the use of SIFs applied within the assumptions of code (Markl & WRC work), but Mr/Ms client this elbow is in a gray area, we need to go beyond what a beam element approach can tell us (e.g. FEA) if we need a better answer.