Integrated Structural Analysis of Composite Pressure Vessels: A Design Tool

The growing interest in gas storage for mobile applications leads to a rising demand for light-weight composite pressure vessels. These are comprised of multiple interacting parts: composite overwrap, liner and boss. The composite overwrap is a multi-layered structure with anisotropic properties that exhibits complex deformation and failure characteristics. The behavior of this structure is unintuitive and can only be understood using thorough analysis. A variety of analysis techniques, ranging from simple netting analysis to detailed finite element analysis, are available. Finite element analysis is applied less often than may be expected due to the high effort for modeling, data preparation and result interpretation. Frequently, manufacturers rely on trial and error approaches to solve the design challenge. Analysis is only used as required to verify the final design. This may result in suboptimal designs. Based on ten years of experience in design and analysis of composite pressure vessels, a tool chain is presented that integrates filament winding simulation and finite element analysis in an automated and efficient manner. This facilitates the understanding of the complex behavior of composite pressure vessels and drives an iterative design-by-analysis process.