Filament wound pressure vessels have been studied for the efficient design tool to consider the variation of fiber angles through-the thickness direction. Filament winding patterns were simulated from semi-geodesic fiber path equation to calculate fiber path on arbitrary surface. A preprocessor was developed to reduce the design time and tedious works to model a filament wound tank. It is a user friendly software with GUI (graphic user interface) based on Visual $C^{++}$.
Finite element analyses were performed considering fiber angle variation in longitudinal and thickness directions by ABAQUS. For the finite element modeling of the pressure tank, the 3-dimensional layered solid element was utilized. From the stress results of pressure tanks, maximum stress criterion in transverse direction was applied to modify material properties for failed region. In the end of each load increment, resultant layer stresses were compared with a failure criterion and properties were reduced to 1/10 for a failed layer. Results of progressive failure analysis were compared with two experimental data.
Parametric studies such as ratio of radii($r_b/r_c$), thickness and winding angle have been performed to improve the performance of pressure tanks. The burst pressure of filament wound tank was estimated by the pressure of occurring the first failure of fiber.
