Numerical analysis of thermal and elastic stresses in thick pressure vessels for cryogenic hydrogen storage apparatus

Abstract

Storage and transportation is one the complicated problems in the direction of the Hydrogen industrial application. The recent study examined the use of relatively light and low cost two types of composed materials to transport the Hydrogen. The investigation is carried out numerically by finite element technique. The vessel is modeled and simulated using ANSYS software. The selected composites are Glass/Epoxy and Graphite/Epoxy. The initial temperature of cryogenic is -70°C. The analysis is conducted under the assumption of external temperature variation from 22 to 400°C. It is found, for both selected composites, that the materials are capable to maintain the storage conditions safely and stable up to 360°C external surface temperature. © 2011 Asian Network for Scientific Information.