Development of a Robust and Time Efficient Modelling Strategy for the Analysis of As-Manufactured CPVs

Abstract

The recent drive towards carbon-neutral transportation has led the automotive industry to the development of fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs). These are especially convenient in the trucking industry, where the required long ranges and the slow recharging capabilities of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) make this alternative not suitable at this time. A crucial component of any fuel cell system is the hydrogen storage solution. This is most often a type IV composite pressure vessel (CPV), where gaseous hydrogen is compressed and stored at 70 MPa. CPVs are sophisticated structural components and the full understanding of their mechanical behaviour is yet to be achieved. This study presents a modelling framework for the prediction of the mechanical response of CPVs during pressurization. The framework begins with an analytical adjustment of the vessel geometry and material composition to match the properties of the filament-wound tank. Then, the analysis is solved numerically. The model takes into account damage progression to simulate the vessel’s deformational behavior and estimate the burst pressure. The modelling strategy is highly replicable, it reduces significantly the computational time of the analysis with respect to the previous benchmark, and it is able to predict burst with reasonable accuracy both in the cylinder and in the dome region of the vessel. The numerical results are correlated to the experimental data collected during burst testing at cellcentric GmbH in Stuttgart, Germany.