Transient Structural Analysis of a Skid Mounted on a Hydrogen Tube Trailer under Shock and Vibration Induced by Road Irregularities

Abstract

Due to environmental pollution and depletion of fossil fuels, hydrogen is becoming an increasingly practical, clean and environmentally friendly option for transportation and energy storage among all green alternative energy sources introduced. Hydrogen storage and delivery is expensive because of the lower energy density per unit volume as compared with conventional fossil fuels. Hence, hydrogen is usually stored in a gaseous state and delivered via tube trailers or pipelines. In this study, a transient structural analysis of a skid structure mounted on a hydrogen tube trailer was performed under shock load induced by road irregularities. The dynamics of the driving trailer according to the unevenness of the road surface were obtained through multibody dynamic simulations considering the full car model equipped with 64 hydrogen tubes. The transient structural analysis of the tube skid was performed by considering the resulting acceleration values as constraints. Through the sequential simulations, we evaluated the structural safety of the designed tube skid mounted on a trailer during hydrogen transport.