Development and analysis of composite overwrapped pressure vessels for hydrogen storage

In this study, composite overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs) for high-pressure hydrogen storage were designed, modeled by finite element (FE) method, manufactured by filament winding technique and tested for burst pressure. Aluminum 6061-T6 was selected as a metallic liner material. Epoxy impregnated carbon filaments were overwrapped over the liner with a winding angle of ±14° to obtain fully overwrapped composite reinforced vessels with non-identical front and back dome layers. The COPVs were loaded with increasing internal pressure up to the burst pressure level. During loading, deformation of the vessels was measured locally with strain gauges. The mechanical performances of COPVs designed with various number of helical, hoop and doily layers were investigated by both experimental and numerical methods. In numerical method, FE analysis containing a simple progressive damage model available in ANSYS software package for the composite section was performed. The results revealed that the FE model provides a good correlation as compared to experimental strain results for the developed COPVs. The burst pressure test results showed that integration of doily layers to the filament winding process resulted with an improvement of the COPVs performance.