The effect of composite damage on fatigue life of the high pressure vessel for natural gas vehicles

In order to examine how the damages such as scratches, cuts and gouges on the composite materials have effects on the fatigue life of NGV vessels, several experiments on real vessels were conducted and finite element analyses were applied. The flaw depths of COPV used in the experiments were 1.5 mm, 2.0 mm, 3.0 mm, and 4.0 mm, while the flaw lengths were 50 mm, 100 mm, and 200 mm. A flaw tolerance test defined by ANSI/IAS NGV2-2000 was performed on 12 vessels using a combination of these flaw depths and lengths. In the finite element analyses, stress analyses were performed using a commercial FEM program after the 3-D modelling of liner, hoop and helical layers by using MSC.PATRAN™. The result of the tests and analyses demonstrated that the effect of the flaw damages on the fatigue life of high pressure vessel for natural gas vehicles increases when the flaw depth is more than 3.0 mm and the flaw length is more than 100 mm.