Conceptual design of a composite pressure hull

Composites are an attractive material for pressure hulls because of their high strength and low density. This paper presents a history of composite pressure vessel hull development over the last 50 years and uses the lessons learnt, to develop a composite pressure hull concept for a shallow diving hull, or buoyancy device. This is done by evaluating several concepts modelled using Finite Element Analysis for weight and other criteria. A converged solution is developed and further analysed for sensitivity to geometric imperfections. These imperfections are shown to have a significant effect on the collapse depth of the composite pressure hull.