A comparative study on failure pressure estimations of GFRP pressure vessels using Acoustic Emission technique

There is a need of design a reliable light weight composite pressure vessel for a launch vehicle or missile system. The composite pressure vessel acted upon by static internal pressure and dynamic during flight, but for practical structural integrity purposes, consideration of internal pressure is all that is necessary. This paper examines the performance of 6-litre capacity cylindrical Glass fiber reinforced plastic (GFRP) pressure vessel under cyclic loading cum burst tests using Acoustic Emission (AE) technique. AE data was acquired only up to 50% of the theoretical burst pressure. Based on the inferences a relation was developed to predict the burst performance of this class of bottles. In fact, one could infer that impending failure was significant even at 50 to 60% of maximum expected operating pressure (MEOP) with a reasonable error margin. Comparative studies were performed with identically machined GFRP pressure vessels which are also within the limit.