Numerical study on the ultimate bearing capacity of a liquid hydrogen cylinder at room temperature and low temperature

China is actively developing liquid hydrogen fuel heavy trucks with the rapid development of hydrogen industry. Liquid hydrogen cylinders are pressure equipment for storing liquid hydrogen fuel. They bear internal pressure load caused by temperature rise in working process, and burst failure by internal pressure may occur under extreme conditions. Therefore, the research on the ultimate bearing capacity of liquid hydrogen cylinders is of great significance to ensure the safety of liquid hydrogen cylinders. In this paper, internal pressure ultimate bearing capacity of a vacuum insulated double-layer austenitic stainless steel liquid hydrogen cylinder with a nominal volume of 500 L is studied by finite element numerical simulation considering geometric nonlinearity, material nonlinearity and contact nonlinearity both at room temperature of 20°C and low temperature of -160°C. The results show that the ultimate internal pressure bearing capacity of the inner vessel of the liquid hydrogen cylinder at -160°C is 2.10 times of that at room temperature; the inner vessel contacts with the outer vessel after large plastic deformation, then the outer vessel and the inner vessel bear the internal pressure load together, which improves the overall ultimate internal pressure bearing capacity of the liquid hydrogen cylinder; the overall ultimate internal pressure bearing capacity of the whole liquid hydrogen cylinder at -160°C reaches 18.98 MPa, which is 1.28 times of that of its inner vessel at the same low temperature and 1.61 times of that of the whole cylinder at room temperature.