Thermal-structural coupled analysis of supports for liquid hydrogen storage tank
Hydrogen is considered as one of the most promising future energy carriers due to its noteworthy advantages of renewable, environmentally friendly and high calorific value. However, the low density of hydrogen makes its storage an urgent technical problem for hydrogen energy development. Compared with the density of gas hydrogen, the density of liquid hydrogen is more than 1.5 times higher. Liquid hydrogen is thus more advantageous for large-scale storage and transportation. However, due to the large difference between the liquid hydrogen temperature and the environment temperature, an inevitable heat leak into the storage tanks of liquid hydrogen occurs, causing boil-off losses and vent of hydrogen gas. Researches on insulation materials for liquid hydrogen are actively being conducted, but research on support design for minimal heat transfer and enhanced rigidity remains insufficient. In this study, to design support for liquid hydrogen storage tank, technique of thermal-structural coupled analysis including geometry, mesh, and boundary condition were developed using Ansys workbench, and equivalent stress and deformation distributions were analyzed.