Effects Of Stacking Sequence on the Structural Performance of Composite Overwrapped Pressure Vessels

Abstract

Pressure vessels are subjected to stresses in axial and radial directions during their service life, which causes undesirable damages. For that reason, it is highly important to design the fiber directions in composite overwrapped pressure vessels in such a way that can carry the loads occurring in both directions. In this context, composite pressure vessels with 20 mm polar opening radii were designed and the geodesic dome profile was obtained by solving the elliptic integral. Helical and hoop winding layers were used together on the cylinder surface and the effect of stacking sequence on the structural performance was examined. In the current study, numerical models with six different stacking sequences were defined and thus stress, strain and failure indexes were determined. Furthermore, the effects of hoop winding layers on the mechanical properties were investigated by comparing with the numerical model consisting of completely helical winding layers. As a result of the current study, it has been concluded that the hoop winding layers have favorable effects on mechanical properties. It has also been observed that the utilization of the hoop winding layers provides an improvement of approximately 28% in the failure index compared to the numerical model consisting of completely helical winding. Additionally, it was observed that although the stacking sequence for the hoop winding was highly effective on the interlaminar shear stress, it did not have much effect on the stress/strain results and the failure indexes.