Can't follow your way of reasoning. This is mine:
1) You have a region like the portion of a vessel wall around a nozzle
2) You know the six components of stress at any location in this region and also the distribution of the same along the thickness (of course you don't really need to calculate everything, you'll know in advance where maximum stresses are).
3) At any location in the region you may now calculate
PL+
Pb: comes from the through thickness linear stress distribution (or averaged stress) that has the same resultant normal load and bending moment as the original distribution (see the formulae in a FAQ in this same forum)
4) As an alternative to 2) and 3), if you calculate the stresses with a thin shell formulation (FEA or by formula is the same), then you directly get the membrane load
N (this is not psi, it is lb/in) and the bending moment
M, and from them you have
PL=
N/
t and
Pb=6
M/
t2
5) Now determine the maximum value of
PL+
Pb in the region (considering that
Pb has both plus and minus signs): this is the value to be compared to 1.5
Sm
prex
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