Thermo-mechanical FE analysis of a composite liquid hydrogen storage system for aerospace applications
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In the last decades, several studies were conducted to investigate the application of new composite materials in the design process of hydrogen storage systems for aerospace applications [1]. High-pressure hydrogen storage is the most conventional type of hydrogen tank, the trade-off with utilizing high pressure storage is the increase in structure wall thickness and, as a consequence, in tank mass necessary to withstand the higher pressures. In order to reduce the tank mass, a possible solution can be cryogenic storage of hydrogen at low pressure [2]. It is possible to increase the hydrogen density keeping it at the liquid phase around −260◦C. In this work the thermal-stress analysis of cryogenic hydrogen composite tanks has been conducted at different temperature scenarios. The insulation properties and the multi-layered stacking sequence design have been investigated [3]. Composite materials with variable stiffness distribution have been taken into account. Possible design solutions are given depending on the mission requirements and the structural boundaries. Some results are presented for different insulation solutions and various stacking sequence