One of the grossly misunderstood things is the pressure thrust load on the nozzle due of expansion joint. Many people in the industry, I have come across, feels that in case of untied expansion joints, the full pressure thrust comes to the nozzle ( which is generally wrong as the nozzle should get minimum loading with the untied expansion joints , however the equipment foundation should get maximum loading in that condition ).One of the reasons behind this is CAESAR II, by default uses PXA at both ends of expansion joints whenever effective diameter is given as an input.One should not do it like this. In my opinion the effective diameter should be kept zero and this PXA loading should be applied at the change in directions and only then the program will correctly determine the amount of PXA that the nozzle sees based on relatve stiffnesses of the different members of the system.

Besides the 4 points mentioned by CraigB, I feel that a stress analyst should also be having a good concept of the fundamental principles of mechanics.

Regards