Development of a new generation of filament wound composite pressure cylinders

A new generation of composite pressure vessels for large scale market applications has been studied in this work. The vessels consist on a thermoplastic liner wrapped with a filament winding glass fibre reinforced polymer matrix structure. A high density polyethylene (HDPE) was selected as liner and a thermosetting resin used as matrix in the glass reinforced filament wound laminate. The Abaqus 6.5.1 FEM package was used to predict the mechanical behaviour of pressure vessels with capacity of approximately of 0.06 m (60 l) for a 0.6 MPa (6 bar) pressure service condition according to the requirements of the EN 13923 standard, namely, the minimum internal burst pressure. The Tsai-Wu and Von Mises criteria were used to predict composite laminate and thermoplastic liner failures, respectively, considering the elasto-plastic behaviour of the HDPE liner and the laminae properties deducted from micromechanical models for composite laminates. Finally, prototype pressure vessels were produced and submitted to pressure tests in similar conditions to those used in the FEM simulations. The comparison between the FEM simulations and experimental results are discussed in the present paper.