Limitations of fossil fuels and concerns surrounding global
warming favor the introduction of new powertrain concepts with
higher efficiency and low greenhouse gas emissions. Fuel cell
vehicles offer the highest potential for sustainable mobility in
the future. One major component of fuel cell vehicles is the
hydrogen storage system. The most-used approach is to store
hydrogen in carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP) vessels
manufactured by a filament-winding process with an operating
pressure up to 70 MPa (hereafter referred as H₂ vessel). Accurate
and reliable failure prediction of such thick composite structures
with numerical methods in case of impact events is important.
The objective of this paper is the evaluation of the commercial
fiber-reinforced plastics material model MAT162 in LS-DYNA to
describe both the onset and the progression of damage of the H₂
vessel. MAT162 has the capability of modeling progressive damage of
composites. It is based on Hashin's quadratic failure criteria
and Matzenmiller's progressive damage model in terms of damage
variables, and it is able to discern various composite failure
modes.
Based on the introduced comprehensive equation set of MAT162, a
consistent set of test procedures and the associated composite
specimens are defined to quantify the material properties which are
needed for solving the equations. The properties quantify the
non-isotropic stress-strain relationship, the non-isotropic
strength as well as continuum damage theory-related values. The
test procedures cover ASTM standardized tests as well as
non-standardized tests. The material properties are either directly
measured or quantified by calibration simulations using MAT162.
Finally, a quasi-static punch test using the cylindrical part of
the vessel with a representative fiber layup and a comparable
composite thickness derived from a real hydrogen storage vessel is
reported in terms of strain, displacement, load, and damage
propagation to validate the MAT162 FE crash model.