Thermal and mechanical analysis of the internal support for LNG cryogenic road tanker

Abstract

Road tankers for liquefied natural gas are designed as double-walled vacuum insulated tanks. The temperature difference between the fluid in the inner vessel and the environmental temperature can reachup to 200 K. Supports holding the internal vessel must be able to transfer complex mechanical loads occurring under operating conditions and at the same time minimize the heat leakage to the tank. In this paper the construction of a steel support with a composite insert for a 25 m3 tank was considered. The proposed design was tested in thermal and mechanical finite element analysis using ANSYS software.