Investigation on failure behaviors of 70 MPa Type IV carbon fiber overwound hydrogen storage vessels

Abstract

In this paper various lay-up schemes were designed for a 70 MPa Type IV hydrogen storage vessel to evaluate the effects of different stacking sequences on the ultimate strength. The netting theory was here used to calculate the laminate thickness and twelve lay-up schemes were selected. The user subroutine UMAT provided by the general software ABAQUS was then introduced to define the composite material properties. The progressive damage model using the Hashin failure theory was created to predict the burst pressure of the vessel. The three lay-up schemes were used to manufacture the prototyped hydrogen vessels for their hydrostatic tests. The results showed that the error between the numerical simulation results and the experimental results were within 10% and the lay-up comprises about 15% of the effect on the burst pressure. It was also indicated that the lay-up model with separated hoop and helical layers can improve the burst pressure, and the helical winding angle distributed from large to small can also improve the burst pressure. The tested results of the fiber volume fraction and porosity demonstrated that lay-up model with alternated hoop and helical layers had a lower porosity than that with separated hoop and helical layers; this is mainly triggered by the cross effect of the helical winding in terms of the elevated fiber and the enriched resin which results in high porosity and low burst pressure.