• Composites Research
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.7-13
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• 2010

Type3 cylinder is a composite pressure vessel fully over-wrapped with carbon/epoxy composite layers over an aluminum liner, which is the most ideal and safe high pressure gas container for CNG vehicles due to the lightweight and the leakage-before-burst characteristics. During service in CNG vehicle, if a fiber cut damage occurs in outer composite layers, it can degrade structural performance, reducing cycling life from the original design life. In this study, finite element modeling and analysis technique for the composite cylinder with fiber-cut crack damage is presented. Because FE analysis of type3 cylinder is path dependant due to plastic deformation of aluminum liner in autofrettage process, method to introduce a crack into FE model affect analysis result. A crack should be introduced after autofrettage in analysis step considering real circumstances where crack occurs during usage in service. For realistic simulation of this situation, FE modeling and analysis technique introducing a crack in the middle of analysis step is presented and the results are compared with usual FE analysis which has initial crack in the model from the beginning of analysis. Proposed analysis technique can be used effectively in the evaluation of influence of damage on composite layers of type3 cylinder and establish inspection criteria of composite cylinder in service.