Not enough background information to provide meaningful guidance. Is the tank a storage tank or pressure vessel? There are various in-service repair codes that can be used to evaluate dents, as locally thinned areas (LTA). If the dent was mechanically induced, I would as a minimum perform surface nondestructive testing to ensure no tears or cracks.
Although deflection of tank nozzles may be of some interest during design we evaluate tank nozzles based on stress and use FEPipe (in conjunction with Caesar 2) which quickly, easily, and accurately performs the calcuations on the basis of ASME Section VIII, Division 2 criteria. Granted there are other methods available which can also be used. If tank and nozzle analysis is cotside of your area of expertise then I would suggest that you defer to someone who is knowledgable in such calculation methods. Regards.
Thank you pvrerate for your reply. We are running Caesar for the pipe analysis and running Algor FEA for a local vessel wall analysis at the nozzle. We are using WRC 297 for the stiffness at that nozzle node in the Caesar model. When running the FEA, we get about .15" deformation in the wall which translate in approx. less that .5 ºF of rotation. The wall thickness at that location is .375". It seems that the deformation is NOT excessive and is accounted for in the Ceasar model. The purpose of the thread was to get any feedback on whether there is a criteria that may limit the wall deflection. BTW all stresses in both pipe and tank are well within acceptable limits.
Thank you for your reply.
