Abstract
The main purpose of this research is to design a high-fatigue performance hoop wrapped compressed natural gas (CNG) composite cylinder. To this end, an optimization algorithm was presented as a combination of finite element simulation (FES) and response surface analysis (RSA). The geometrical model was prepared as a variable wall-thickness following the experimental measurements. Next, transient dynamic analysis was performed subjected to the refueling process, including the minimum and maximum internal pressures of 20 and 200 bar, respectively. The time histories of stress tensor components were extracted in the critical region. Furthermore, RSA was utilized to investigate the interaction effects of various polymer composite shell manufacturing process parameters (thickness and fiber angle) on the fatigue life of polymer composite CNG pressure tank (type-4). In the optimization procedure, four parameters including wall-thickness of the composite shell in three different sections of the CNG tank and fiber angle were considered as input variables. In addition, the maximum principal stress of the component was considered as the objective function. Eventually, the fatigue life of the polymer composite tank was calculated using stress-based failure criterion. The results indicated that the proposed new design (applying optimal parameters) leads to improve the fatigue life of the polymer composite tank with polyethylene liner about 2.4 times in comparison with the initial design.
Highlights
For the first time, the response surface method as a well-known data mining technique was used to optimize the manufacturing process parameters including fiber angle and wall-thickness in different parts of the structure. As it is clear from the literature review, several parameters are important and effective in analyzing the stress of a compressed natural gas (CNG) polymer composite tank and examining its strength and efficiency
In many studies done in the past, this parameter was considered constant and in the present research, in addition to modeling, it varies according to reality; this parameter was optimized in different parts of the CNG polymer composite tank
After analyzing the data by response surface method (RSM) [20,21,22] to investigate the effect of parameters on the response, the optimization tool was used to reduce stress in the critical region of the structure and the optimum values for the parameters were extracted
Summary
It is assumed that the designed tank has a fixed wall-thickness and the layout was [90◦ , θ], in which θ = 10◦ , 30◦ , 50◦ , and 70◦ In this area, other studies have been conducted to design, and perform stress analysis, failure analysis, structural stability, and optimization to store hydrogen as a vehicle fuel [8,9]. They reported that the final gas temperature decreases by raising the time of the filling process In this regard, some studies have been performed using CFD simulation [15,16] and experimental setup [17,18]. The cyclic behavior of a type-4 CNG fuel tank considering variable wallthickness of the polymer composite shell was investigated using finite element simulation. For the first time, the response surface method as a well-known data mining technique was used to optimize the manufacturing process parameters including fiber angle and wall-thickness in different parts of the structure
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