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Most piping stress models have nonlinear boundary conditions including gaps, friction, one-way supports, etc. for nonlinear static analysis, yet most legacy piping stress programs are incapable of nonlinear time history analysis. That means that in order to run time history cases, engineers would have to linearize all nonlinear supports for all dynamic analysis cases, which is a dubious modeling approach. This limitation in widely used legacy pipe stress programs likely helps push engineers toward the DLF static analysis alternative. CSiPlant can easily account for nonlinear boundary conditions in nonlinear time history analysis, and nonlinear time history cases in CSiPlant do not typically take long at all to run. For example, a 400 node/joint nonlinear time history load case with multiple nonlinear boundary conditions typically runs in less than 2 minutes using CSiPlant's SAPfire SAPFire solver.
Legacy piping stress programs have additional limitations in the number of time history cases and/or the size of time history functions, limitations which also push engineers toward the DLF approach. CSiPlant has no limit to the number of dynamic analysis cases which can be analyzed, or the size of the time history function.
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