ANALYTICAL AND NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION OF WIRE-WINDING PROCESS EFFECT IN REINFORCEMENT OF CNG VESSELS TYPE II

Increase of strength to weight ratio is one of the main aims in pressure vessel reinforcement. Wire-winding is a safe technique which can be used to reinforce pressure vessels by introducing compression prestress. The purpose of this paper is analytical and numerical investigation of reinforcement effect on CNG vessels by using wire-winding technique. This process increases working pressure to weight ratio in aluminum vessels wound by steel wire in comparison to full-steel vessels. In this work, first, the wire-winding method was explained. Next, by considering synchronic yield in the CNG vessel and number of wire layers, maximum internal pressure is calculated. For this purpose, an analytical solution based on Tresca yield criteria is used. Then, the problem is simulated by finite element software. Finally, the obtained results are compared with the analytical results. It is shown that in reinforcement of aluminum vessel by winding five layers, the maximum ratio of working pressure to weight can increase 55% in comparison with full-steel vessels. Also, maximum error between analytical and numerical results was about 3%.