As already indicated, self-reinforced nozzles often go hand in hand with severe or critical service conditions. Because of it, it is convenient to mention that for this special kind of nozzles stress concentrators must be eliminated as much as possible.

For some design codes, the design and calculation criteria for self-reinforced nozzles and built up nozzles are not always the same. Requirements are more conservative for the latter case. As an example, consider the screening study of the ASME Section VIII Division 2, procedure to determine if a fatigue analysis is required. If a given equipment or any of its components is of integral configuration, it can withstand a higher number of variable loads than a non-integral configuration equipment, without being necessary to verify its strength against fatigue loads by means of a specific calculation.