Design and development of a filament wound composite overwrapped pressure vessel

Abstract

A detailed design optimization of a composite over wrapped pressure vessel (COPV) is performed through finite element analysis (FEA) and testing. The design optimization of a type IV polymer-lined composite overwrapped pressure vessel is performed by means of the finite element method using ABAQUS software. A plug-in named WCM in ABAQUS is used that automates the entire process of constructing a COPV FEA model. This work investigates the influence of winding angle, number of layers, and sequence of layers on the burst strength of COPV. Maximum stress, maximum strain, Tsai Hill, Tsai Wu and Hashin progressive failure criteria are used to find the burst strength of the COPV. Comparing all the results obtained using above the failure criteria, it is found that the maximum strain criterion is more conservative, and the Hashin criterion is the least conservative. Digital Image Correlation (DIC) was utilized during burst testing to quantify the failure strain in different directions. The numerical results were compared with the experimental burst testing results and a reasonably good comparison was found.

Keywords

• Composite overwrapped pressure vessel
• Finite element method
• Burst pressure
• Failure criteria