Finite Element Analysis of GFRP LPG Cylinder

  Remya Gopi,  Beena B R

Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) is increasingly becoming the preferred choice of fuel in the world. The increase in patronage could be attributed to its affordability, efficiency and environmental friendliness. It has become necessary to design and execute the best customer oriented practices and to internalize them for providing enhanced satisfaction to the customer through the employees. LP-gas inside a container is in two states of matter, liquid and vapour. The liquid portion of container is in the bottom and the vapour is in the uppermost part of the vessel. Liquefied Petroleum (LP) Gas is stored and handled as a liquid when under pressure inside a LP-Gas container. When compressed moderately at normal temperature, it becomes liquid. When gas is withdrawn, the pressure drops and the liquid reverts to gas. This means that it can be transported and stored as liquid and burnt as gas. The LPG cylinders can be used for carrying the gas .The conventional cylinders are made of steel. The conventional cylinders have some disadvantages such as not having accurate way of showing the rate of fuel consumption and level of fullness or emptiness of the fuel, easily been rusted, hard to move because of the weight. By making the conventional cylinder with FRP it helps to over-come the problems. This paper is innovation of an alternative material GFRP of Liquid petroleum gas cylinder. So, the finite element analysis of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) cylinders made of Steel and Glass Fiber Reinforced Plastic (GFRP) composites were carried out. Finite element analysis of composite cylinder subjected to internal pressure were performed. FE analysis package ANSYS is used to model the shell composites. The Input Details provided are Basic geometry & specifications of sample model Material Specification: Density, Tensile Strength, Young’s modulus, Poisson ratio etc. FEA used to study the stresses due to pressure inside cylinder. The safe load capacity and optimum design were obtained. These results of pressure and deformation is checked with analytical solution in order to validate the results

Keywords- LPG,LPG STEEL CYLINDER,GFRP CYLINDER,ALLOWABLE STRESS,OPTIMUM THICKNESS.

Unique Identification Number - IJEDR1504111
Page Number(s) - 642-649
Pubished in - Volume 3 | Issue 4 | December 2015
DOI (Digital Object Identifier) -   
Publisher - IJEDR (ISSN - 2321-9939)

  Remya Gopi,  Beena B R,   "Finite Element Analysis of GFRP LPG Cylinder", International Journal of Engineering Development and Research (IJEDR), ISSN:2321-9939, Volume.3, Issue 4, pp.642-649, December 2015, Available at :http://www.ijedr.org/papers/IJEDR1504111.pdf