Design and Stress Analysis of FRP Composite Pressure Vessel

Pressure vessels are containers that operate at pressures above atmospheric pressure. A pressure vessel can be defined as a relatively high-volume pressure component ( such as a spherical or cylindrical container ) that has a cross section larger than the associated pipe or tubing .The composite materials have been widely used for the manufacturing of pressure vessels from a very long time. These pressure vessels are manufactured by filament winding process. The filament wound composite pressure vessels have special characteristics of high strength to modulus ratio. The Filament wound composite pressure vessels have become very popular in various industries and applications that include aerospace, sewage, chemical, oil and gas industries. During operation these pressure vessels are subjected to very high internal pressures and very high internal stresses are developed in them. The safety aspect is vital because of high working pressure and build-up of high stresses in the pressure vessel. Therefore the stress and burst pressure analysis are essential for the safe working and performance evaluation of such pressure vessels. Finite element model of the multilayered filament wound composite pressure vessel is established by the finite element software ANSYS 12. The pressure vessel is analyzed for maximum stress and its burst pressure is predicted for hoop and helical windings of the fibers using a failure model such as the Tsai-Wu failure criterion. The fibers are oriented helically for various orientations such as (+30/-30)s, (+35,-35)s ,(+40,-40)s ,(+45/-45)s, (+50,-50),(+55/-55)s,(+60,-60) and (+65/-65)s. Based on the maximum stress criteria, burst pressure and optimum angle of fiber orientation were determined from the analysis. The aim of this paper is to analyze stresses in a Glass filament wound FRP pressure vessel for different winding orientations using Ansys 12 , and compute the burst pressure of the vessel by applying a suitable failure criterion. This paper aims at developing composite pressure vessel using E-Glass , and this work will be extremely useful for FRP-equipment manufacturers, designers, and consultants in the field of chemical process industries