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Proper consideration of pipe/structure interaction has typically been ignored or greatly oversimplified because before CSiPlant there was not a reliable , feasible tool to properly consider combined pipe/structure interaction. A typical pipe rack structural analysis model has a LOT of assigned loads which account for weight load of heavy equipment, live loads, cable tray loads, fireproofing, and other entities with significant weight and mass. Those assigned loads need to be properly accounted for if you want to have a realistic analysis of piping combined with the structure.
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For those engineers who believe that it's conservative or 'close enough' to assume a rigid and undeflected pipe support structure in pipe stress analysis models, how can you know that with any degree of certainty? Have you or any of your colleagues run comparisons between results from piping-only models vs. results from more detailed models with piping and structure together? Have you Has your company evaluated the economic and safety consequences of one modeling approach vs. the other? How about comparisons with and without P-delta? It's our claim that before CSiPlant, comparisons like this were simply not feasible because the tools were not available. With CSiPlant working with SAP2000, pipe/structure interaction (and P-delta) is now very straightforward to consider, and this represents a noteworthy leap in pipe stress analysis technology.
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