A numerical and experimental study on mechanical behaviours of type III composite vessels with different lay-up sequences

5%.There are various factors that have impact on the burst pressure and the failure mechanism of filament wound composite pressure vessels. The sequence of lay-up was less considered because previous researchers paid little attention on the mechanical performance of the whole vessel. In this paper, a 2D axisymmetric finite element model was proposed to predict the damage evolution, failure strength and failure mode of the composite overwrapped pressure vessels. UMAT subroutine based on Hashin failure criteria was introduced to simulate the progressive damage properties of the composite material. The FE models were validated by comparison with the experimental results, and the error between the numerical simulation results and the experimental results was near 5%. In addition, two schemes were performed to evaluate the effects of different lay-up sequence on the ultimate strength and obtain the optimized scheme of lay-up sequence.