The recent surge in energy consumption has sharply increased the use of fossil fuels, leading to a steep rise in the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Interest in hydrogen is growing to mitigate the issue of global warming. Currently, hydrogen energy is transported in the form of high-pressure gaseous hydrogen, which has the disadvantages of low safety and energy efficiency. To develop commercial hydrogen vehicles, liquid hydrogen should be utilized. Liquid hydrogen storage tanks have supports between the inner and outer cylinders to bear the weight of the cylinders and the liquid hydrogen. However, research on the design to improve the structural safety of these supports is still insufficient. In this study, through a thermal-structural coupled analysis of liquid hydrogen storage tanks, the model with three supports, which had the lowest maximum effective stress in the outer tank, inner tank, and supports as proposed in the author's previous research, was used to create analysis models based on the diameter of the supports. A structurally safe design for the supports was proposed.

The government declared ‘2050 carbon neutrality’ as a national vision in October 2020 and subsequently pursued the establishment of a ‘2050 carbon neutrality scenario’ as a follow-up response. 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. 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 structures for liquid hydrogen storage tanks, a thermal-structural coupled analysis technique was developed using Ansys Workbench. Analytical models were created based on the number and arrangement of supports to propose structurally safe support designs.

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.