Liner Damage Analysis for Hydrogen Storage Vessels Subjected to Local Compressive Loads Using the Submodeling Method

Abstract When a hydrogen storage vessel is subjected to a local impact load, damage may occur in the liner and result in hydrogen leakage and other catastrophic consequences. When predicting liner damage of a hydrogen storage vessel using the finite element method (FEM), although large element size is required to achieve a desired computational efficiency, it oftentimes causes inaccuracy in the damage model. To remedy this problem, in this study a novel approach which calculates the material damage based on the GISSMO (Generalized Incremental Stress State dependent damage Model) damage model and employs a submodeling strategy is proposed. According to this approach, the global model is discretized to large elements to increase the efficiency, while the submodel is meshed to much smaller elements to accurately reflect the material damage. Employing the established approach and material parameters calibrated from a large set of notched aluminum alloy 5083 specimens, the liner damage of a type III hydrogen storage vessel subjected to a local compressive load was simulated. This way, the study reveals how the characteristics of the stress and material damage interact with each other. In addition, the study also demonstrates that the proposed approach can be used as a viable means to evaluate the damage within hydrogen storage vessels.