Progressive Damage Analysis and Optimization of Winding Angle and Geometry for a Composite Pressure Hull Wound Using Geodesic and Planar Patterns

Recently, it has been found that submarine pressure hulls constructed from fiber-reinforced multilayers have great potential to replace classical metallic ring-stiffened pressure hulls. The strength and stability of these structures are the most important functional requirements and should be considered in any design procedure. This study aimed to optimize the strength and buckling stability of elliptical composite deep-submerged pressure hulls using two different filament winding patterns, namely geodesic and planar. The numerical modeling of the pressure hull under hydrostatic was carried out using the Finite Element Method (FEM) in ABAQUS using Python script and a damage model written as a User MATerial (UMAT) Subroutine. Puck failure criterion was chosen for failure prediction. The results suggest that both buckling and the static material failure should be considered in the design of a composite pressure hull. Moreover, it was shown that the optimum pressure hull has a geodesic filament winding pattern with a/b (the ratio between two diameters) =1.2 and the winding angle of 45 degrees. Based on the progressive failure criterion, for such an optimum design, failure initiates at an applied load of 28.6MPa and the pressure hull withstands to 40.3MPa.