IMPROVEMENTS IN FEA OF COMPOSITE OVERWRAPPED PRESSURE VESSELS

Finite element analysis (FEA) of a composite overwrapped pressure vessel (COPV) has traditionally been a tedious and time consuming task. FEA is often omitted in the development of many vessels in favor of a “build and burst” philosophy based only on preliminary design with netting analysis. This is particularly true for small vessels or vessels that are not weight critical. The primary difficulty in FEA of a COPV is the creation of the model geometry on the sub-ply level. This paper discusses employing a commercially available tool to drastically reduce the time required to build a COPV FEA model. This method produces higher fidelity models in only slightly more time. Analysis results are presented along with comparisons to burst test data. Additionally the application that inspired this tool’s development is discussed.