Advanced Composite Materials in Cryogenic Propellant Tank

Abstract

The reinforced resin matrix of carbon composite materials are being utilized in the aerospace industry over metallic cryo-tanks as the methods of diminishing vehicle weight. Carbon fibre reinforced composites (CFRC) dominates in high strength-to-weight and high stiffness-to-weight proportions. The usage of textile-composites in cryogenic propellant tanks (cryo-tank) for upcoming space heavy-lift launch vehicles could incredibly lessen the vehicle's weight by supplanting the indistinguishably sized cryo-tanks developed of typical metallic materials. Although the CFRC composites producing process is not simple. In this work, a cryogenic tank is modeled in CATIA V5 and analysis is done by using ANSYS Workbench V16.2. After the analysis process, we had fabricated a scaled model of a 1:50 ratio. Here cryogenic propellant tank built by using textile composites (glass cloth-epoxy laminate) such as FR-4, G-10, S2-Glass/Epoxy composite materials. The main objective of the study conducted in this paper is to design cryogenic propellant tanks without metallic liner or insulator, thus further diminishing the overall weight of the cryo-tanks and sustaining in the service mechanical loads when exposed to the cryogenic temperatures (77 K).