Apologies to dredge up the past, but I recently came into a similar scenario.

The underground portion of my system consists of the following:
1. One partially buried 30 deg bend, 50D radius.
2. A fairly short section of pipe (compared to all the bends in the system).
3. One 90 deg bend, 50D radius.
4. An shorter run of pipe.
5. Another partially buried 30 deg bend, 50D radius.

Since we can't (shouldn't) analyze large diameter bends that are in the earth (see post here), is it appropriate to break partially submerged elbows and apply bends to the portion above ground?

Is there a bend radius to tangent length ratio where it's inappropriate to treat it as a stick model?

Is there a bend radius cutoff that is too gray to treat as either bend or as straight sections?

Thanks.

Side question:
Did the ability to include degree symbols disappear recently in this forum?