DESIGN OPTIMISATION OF A COMPOSITE CYLINDRICAL PRESSURE VESSEL USING FEA

Abstract- Interest in studying of the shell arises from the fifties of twentieth century. The assemblies, containing thin shells, find wide use in the modern engineering, especially in ships, aircraft and spacecraft industry. The shell vibrations and buckling modes are analyzed by means of numerical methods, to clarify qualitatively the critical loads and different buckling modes. In today’s aerospace and aircraft industries, structural efficiency is the main concern. Due to their high specific strength and light weight, fiber reinforced composites find a wide range of applications. Light weight compression load carrying structures form part of all aircraft, and space vehicle fuel tanks, air cylinders are some of the many applications. In the present work, design analysis of fiber reinforced multi layered composite shell, with optimum fiber orientations; minimum mass under strength constraints for a cylinder under axial loading for static and buckling analysis on the pressure vessel has been studied. The modeling is carried out in Catia V5 R20 and the analysis is carried out in Ansys 15.0 solver. Index Terms- lightweight compression, reinforced multi-layered, thin shells. I