Owing to the large difference between the dimensions of the turbine and the circumferential weldments, a global-local FE model was used in this study. The global FE model was meshed with elements of sizes varying between 0.5m and 0.1m, where the mesh was refined at regions closer to the weldment to keep the element aspect ratio within 0.1. The element size in the local model was further reduced between 3mm and 20mm as shown in Fig. 6. A 20-noded quadratic hexahedral (brick) element with reduced integration (C3D20R) was used to avoid shear locking phenomenon encountered during bending. In the global model, 2 elements were used across the thickness of the cylinder so that the total number of elements in the geometry was 10340. In order to improve the accuracy in the local model, the same was increased to 5 elements in the local model, thereby resulting in 61500 elements.