About

Design of composite pressure vessels (CPVs) is a specialized field. The expertise lies with a few who have spent their career in understanding the unique properties of the composite materials and learning how to align the plies in a special way to efficiently support the pressure inside the vessel. Some of the basic analytical tools such as Netting Analysis can be simple to grasp, but are limited to thin walled composites, which restrict the design of the vessels to relatively low pressures. Access to more advanced tools like finite element analysis , if at all available, are relegated to the experts who know how to effectively model a complex structure such as composite pressure vessel. In addition, use of such tools require certain level of field experience, familiarity with the manufacturing process and last but not least, software packages that are expensive and require steep learning curves. Thats how the inspiration came for CPVdesign.com: to present a few essential apps and resources to use in designing composite pressure vessels. One can use the utlity apps in the Tools section to make preliminary assessments of the design and to generate a building block for the design. The FE Analysis section allows a more detailed step-by-step approach to model, build and analyze a composite pressure vessel structure using an advanced, nonlinear structural finite element analysis. All of this is performed 'in the cloud' without the need to install a software on the user's end. Once the design is complete, the optimized laminate sequence can be used to generate filament winding patterns for the entire vessel in Patterns. I hope these utilities provide good learning blocks as well as useful tools for the advanced designers in composite pressure vessels.