JOURNAL OF

COMPOSITE
Review M AT E R I A L S
Journal of Composite Materials
0(0) 1–9
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filament-wound composite pressure DOI: 10.1177/0021998316662512
jcm.sagepub.com
vessels based on hyperelliptic
functions considering both geodesic
and non-geodesic winding patterns

Ji Zhou, Jianqiao Chen, Yaochen Zheng,

Zhu Wang and Qunli An

Abstract
Filament-wound composite pressure vessels, owing to the advantages of their high specific strength, specific modulus and
fatigue resistance, as well as excellent design performance, have been widely used in energy engineering, chemical
industry and other fields. A filament-wound composite pressure vessel generally consists of two parts, a cylindrical
drum part and the dome parts. In the cylindrical drum part, the filament winding angle and the winding layer thickness can
be easily determined due to the regular shape. In the dome parts, however, both the winding angle and the thickness vary
along the meridian line. Performance of the dome parts, which strongly depends on the effect of end-opening and the
winding mode, dominates the performance of a pressure vessel. In this paper, optimum design of the dome parts is
studied by considering both geodesic winding and non-geodesic winding patterns. A hyperelliptic function is adopted as
the basis function for describing the meridian of the dome shape. The dome contour is optimized by taking the shape
factor (S.F.) as the objective and parameters in the basis function as the design variables. A specific composite pressure
vessel is taken as the numerical analysis example with varying dome shape which is to be optimized. The optimum design
solution is obtained through the particle swarm optimization algorithm. It shows that an optimized dome with non-
geodesic winding has better S.F. as compared with geodesic winding. Influences of the slippage coefficient and the polar
opening on the S.F. are also discussed.

Keywords
Dome shape optimization, filament winding, hyperelliptic function, non-geodesic winding

Introduction of the dome, i.e., they are affected by the geometry of

Filament-wound composite pressure vessels, which utilize
a fabrication technique of filament winding to form high
specific strength, specific modulus, good corrosion resist-
ance and fatigue resistance, are widely used in chemical
industry and other fields. Aviation fuel tank, portable
storage tanks, rocket launch chassis and aviation oxygen
storage equipment are some application examples.
Most filament-wound composite pressure vessels
consist of two parts, a cylindrical drum part and
dome parts. In the cylindrical drum part, the filament
winding angle and the layer thickness can be deter-
mined easily due to the regular shape. In the dome
parts, however, care should be paid in design and
manufacture. In these parts, both the winding angle
and the layer thickness vary along with the meridian
the dome. Since the performance of a pressure vessel is
mainly controlled by its dome parts, it is important that
the dome shape and the winding patterns should be
adequately designed to achieve required performances.
Department of Mechanics, Huazhong University of Science and
Technology, China
Corresponding authors:
Jianqiao Chen, Department of Mechanics, Huazhong University of Science
and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, P.R. China.
Email: jqchen@mail.hust.edu.cn
Yaochen Zheng, Department of Mechanics, Huazhong University of
Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, P.R. China.
Email: zyc276565153@126.com

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2 Journal of Composite Materials 0(0)

The optimum design of dome contour for composite

pressure vessels has been researched by many scholars
and experts.1,2 Ellipsoidal, hemispherical and papilion-
aceous are common shapes for the dome. The hemi-
spherical dome has good load carrying capacity under
internal pressure. The maximum principal stress is low
owing to the even radius of curvature. However, the
hemispherical dome produces relatively a smaller
volume for a definite length of the container. Design
standards for the ellipsoidal and papilionaceous domes
are given in references.3,4 Although a papilionaceous
dome is easy to produce, there are some evident draw-
backs including the unevenly distributed stress resulting
from the uncontinuous curvature radius and the high
principal stress occurring in the transitional region near
the cylindrical drum part. The ellipsoidal dome is the
most common shape in engineering application. Figure 1. A filament-wound composite pressure vessel’s
Nevertheless, high stresses may still exist in the transi- dome.8
tional region and the volume performance provided by
the dome shape is not the best one among a set of concern of this paper. Figure 1 shows the coordinates
general shapes. Performances of pressure vessels can of a filament-wound composite pressure vessel’s dome.
be improved by utilizing more reasonable dome shape. In a spherical coordinate, the dome of a filament-
For the dome shape optimization problems, usually wound composite vessel is described by its meridian
a set of basis functions such as B spline function5 or curve r ¼ r(z). The dome surface is usually a surface
polyline functions with free parameters to be deter- of revolution. Its main curvature line coordinates are
mined are used for the meridian line of the structure. the meridian ( line) and the weft ( line).
In some other studies,6,7 the meridian is created by The netting analysis method9 is a reasonable and
linking a certain amount of points which coordinates simple way of ruling the winding condition and deter-
are chosen as the design variables. mining the stresses. In this method, the winding fiber
In this study, a hyperelliptic function is used to should satisfy the following rules:
describe the meridian of a dome. Two parameters in the
function are chosen as the design variables. The aim is to 1. Fibers are distributed symmetrically about the
maximize the shape factor (S.F.) which is defined as the meridian line to form the spiral gridding.
product of internal pressure and the dome volume per 2. The angle  between the fiber and the meridian line
dome mass. A larger S.F. means the pressure vessel can is a function of the radial distance to the axis of
bear larger internal pressure with smaller weight. The rotation, i.e.,  ¼ f1 ðrÞ. At the polar opening, the
optimum shape parameters are obtained through the par- winding angle equals to =2.
ticle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. Both the geo- 3. The fiber layer thickness varies with the radius, i.e.,
desic and the non-geodesic winding patterns are t ¼ f2 ðrÞ. It is assumed that each filament crosses the
considered. It is shown that better performances can be equator and all other parallel circles, then the fol-
achieved by utilizing the non-geodesic winding pattern lowing relation holds
instead of the geodesic pattern.
tð2rÞ cos  ¼ tc ð2rc Þ cos c ¼ const ð1Þ

Winding patterns and the approximation

method of determining the winding angle
Geometrical relations
A typical filament-wound pressure vessel dome is com-
posed of a lining layer, the fiber reinforced layer and
protective layer. In Lei et al.’s study,6,8 the continuum
theory and a non-geodesic law are adopted in describ-
ing the winding fiber, and stress field is modeled using
classical lamination theory. The fiber reinforced layer
plays the role of load carrying which is the main
where tc and rc denote the thickness and the winding
angle at the equator, respectively.
Winding conditions
In fabricating a motor case of rockets, for example,
geodesic winding is a typical winding method. The geo-
desic winding has been widely used in composite pres-
sure vessels. The winding method involves having
windings go along the shortest distance between two

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Zhou et al. 3

points on the winding surface to ensure the structural

stability, i.e., slipping and bending do not occur
between the filaments and the winding surface. The
geodesic condition is described by the following
Clairaut’s equation

r sin  ¼ const ð2Þ

where  is the winding angle between a filament and a

meridian line at a point on the surface, and r is the radial
distance to the axis of rotation z. At the polar opening
with an opening radius r0 , the fiber paths are taken as
tangential to the polar opening, i.e.,  ¼ =2, then from
equation (2), one obtains the relation sin  ¼ r0 =r. Figure 2. Representation of a general shape of mandrel.
The geodesic winding is the most stable winding pat- differential equation for the non-geodesic path of the
tern. If the fiber deviates from the geodesic line, it is liable cone becomes
to slip following the direction of geodesic line. For a non-
geodesic winding, if the fiber deviates from the geodesic d  sin2   k sin 
¼ ð5Þ
line not far away, a quasi-geodesic winding pattern can be dz cos   ðkz þ bÞ
obtained10 in which the fibers can maintain a stable state Then, the non-geodesic equation can be derived by
owing to the friction between the fiber layers and the man- integral of equation (5), i.e.
drel surface. If the fiber is stable on the surface of a man- 
drel, the slippage coefficient11  ¼ fg =fn should be smaller 1 kz þ b kz0 þ b
z  z0 ¼  ð6Þ
than the friction factor, with fg being the fiber force com-  sin 0 sin 
ponent perpendicular to the tangent line of fibers along the
geodesic curvature direction, and fn the force component For a general shape of mandrel, the following
perpendicular to the surface of a mandrel. approximation method is proposed to solve the wind-
For general shapes of a dome in non-geodesic wind- ing angle of fibers. As shown in Figure 2, divide man-
ing pattern, the angle  should satisfy the following drel P0 Pd
1   PN into N parts equally along the r-axis
equation and generate Nþ1 pointsP0 , P1 , P2 . . .,PN . The adjacent
points Pi and Piþ1 is connected by a straight line. By
(   ) rotating the straight generatrix, N micro cones are
 1 þ r0 ðzÞ2 sin2   rðzÞr00 ðzÞ cos2  obtained which are considered as the approximation
 
d  1 þ r0 ðzÞ2 r0 ðzÞ sin  of the original shape.
¼   ð3Þ For a micro cone in the domain [zi,ziþ1], the two
dz cos   rðzÞ 1 þ r0 ðzÞ2
points Pi and Piþ1 are at the generatrix.

The partial differential equation can only be solved rðzi Þ ¼ ki zi þ bi ð7Þ

in simple shape mandrel cases such as cylindrical and
conical shape. For complex shape cases, approximate rðziþ1 Þ ¼ ki ziþ1 þ bi ð8Þ
approaches are necessary in solving equation (3).
where ki ¼ ½rðziþ1 Þ  rðzi Þ=ðziþ1  zi Þ. By substituting
equations (7) and (8) into equation (6), one obtains
Multi-micro-cone approximation method
A method for solving equation (3) approximately is ðziþ1  zi Þ 1 1
¼  ð9Þ
proposed below. rðzi Þrðziþ1 Þ rðzi Þ sin i rðziþ1 Þ sin iþ1
First, a vector representation for a cone in polar
coordinates is introduced For each micro cone, equation (9) reads

!   ðz1  z0 Þ 1 1
r ðu, zÞ ¼ fðzÞ  cos u, fðzÞ  sin u, z ð4Þ i¼0 ¼  ð10Þ
rðz0 Þrðz1 Þ rðz0 Þ sin 0 rðz1 Þ sin 1

where f ðzÞ ¼ kz þ b, z denotes the axial distances, and u ðz2  z1 Þ 1 1

i¼1 ¼  ð11Þ
stands for the angular coordinate in the parallel direc- rðz1 Þrðz2 Þ rðz1 Þ sin 1 rðz2 Þ sin 2
tion. By substituting equation (4) into equation (3), the

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4 Journal of Composite Materials 0(0)

ðz3  z2 Þ 1 1 equation (16) is negative since the coordinate z0 at the

i¼2 ¼  ð12Þ
rðz2 Þrðz3 Þ rðz2 Þ sin 2 rðz3 Þ sin 3 polar opening is the largest, i.e., z 5 z0 . It shows that a
larger slippage coefficient corresponds to a smaller
ðzN  zN1 Þ 1 1 angle.
i¼ N1 ¼ 
rðzN1 ÞrðzN Þ rðzN1 Þ sin N1 rðzN Þ sin N
ð13Þ Solutions for the fiber layer thickness
By adding the above N equations, the following rela- From equation (1), the fiber layer thickness in the dome
tion is observed part is obtained as

X
N 1
ziþ1  zi 1 1 t r cos c
 ¼  ð14Þ ¼ ð17Þ
rðzi Þrðziþ1 Þ rðz0 Þ sin 0 rðzN Þ sin N tc rc cos 
i¼0

The thickness distribution (equation (17)) is reason-

Note that rðzi Þ  rðziþ1 Þ when N is large enough, the
following expression can be derived
X
N 1
ziþ1  zi
 
rðzi Þrðziþ1 Þ
i¼0
z0
By substituting equation (15) into equation (14), the
winding angle of fibers in a general shape of mandrel is
obtained approximately as
able in the areas far from the polar opening. Since fiber
slippage may occur during the fabrication process near
the polar opening, other methods should be used to
ZzN predict the fiber thickness near the polar opening.
dz
ð15Þ According to Knoell’s method,12 the following equa-
r2 ðzÞ
tions provide better results as compared to the single
prediction formula (equation (17)).
r0 
t cos1 r
¼ 8n  o1=2 9
tc < ðr2c r20 Þ ðr2c ðr0 þwÞ2 Þ1=2 2 þw2 =
1=2

rðz0 Þ sin 0 sin1 2rc

ð18Þ
rðzÞ sin  ¼ ð16Þ : ;
Rz dz
1  rðz0 Þ sin 0   r2 ðzÞ
z0
r0  r  ðro þ wÞ

For  ¼ 0, the solution of equation (16) is the well-    

t cos1 rr0  cos1 r0 þw r
known Clairaut’s equation. In every other cases ( 6¼0), ¼ 8n  o1=2 9
tc < ðr2c r20 Þ1=2 ðr2c ðr0 þwÞ2 Þ1=2 2 þw2 =
the roving path will deviate from the geodesic path
forming a non-geodesic one. For a dome with sin1 2rc
ð19Þ
: ;
r0¼ 0:4 mand rc ¼ 1:0 m, the fiber angle is calculated
and shown in Figure 3. It is noted that the integral in ðro þ wÞ  r  rc

In these equations, w is the band width of the fiber.

90 Tsai–Wu failure criterion

l=0
80 l=0.1 A failure criterion is needed to assess the strength of
l=0.3 the dome structure. The Tsai–Wu tensor failure criter-
70 l=0.5
ion is employed in this paper. Specific merits of the
winding angle (degree)

60 Tsai–Wu failure criterion include: (1) invariance

under rotation or redefinition of coordinates; (2) trans-
50
formation via known tensor transformation laws and
40 (3) symmetry properties akin to those of the stiffness
and compliances. The Tsai–Wu failure criterion13 states
30
that no failure occurs as long as the following condi-
20 tion holds
10
0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1

2
2
2
radius of parallel circles r (m) F11 LðkÞ þ F22 TðkÞ þF66 TL
ðk Þ
þ2F12 TðkÞ LðkÞ
ð20Þ
Figure 3. Wingding angles of non-geodesic for different þ F1 LðkÞ þ F2 TðkÞ  1  0
slippage coefficients.

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Zhou et al. 5

Start

Initialize the particles

for
each Input the structure parameters
particle and the initial pressure

Input material properties

and strength limits
Build the finite element model

Calculate Fi and Fij of the

Change the pressure Calculate and extract the stress Tsai-Wu criterion

No
Fisi + Fijsisj =1

Yes

Output the burst pressure and

Calculate the interior volume
the dome mass

Calculate the fitness

Calculate the individual extremums

and global extremum

Update the particles’ velocities

and positions

No
Maximum number
of iterations

Yes
Finish

Figure 4. A flow chart of the optimum design procedure.

The strength parametersF11 , F22 ,F66 , F1 and F2 are with changeable parameters or a certain number of vari-
given by: able points on the meridian. In this study, the hyperellip-
tic function14 is chosen as the basis function for describing
1 1 1 the meridian of the dome shape.
F11 ¼ , F22 ¼ , F66 ¼ 2 ,
LU 0LU TU 0TU TLU The hyperelliptic function is defined as:
1 1 1 1
F1 ¼  , F2 ¼  , n n
LU 0LU TU 0TU ðx  x0 Þ2 ð y  y0 Þ2
1 1 þ ¼1 ð21Þ
F12 ¼  pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi a2 b2
2 LU 0LU TU 0TU

where LU and 0LU are the tensile and compressive
strengths of the composite material in the longitudinal dir-
ection, respectively, TU and 0TU are those in the transverse
direction, respectively, TLU is the in-plane shear strength.
Optimum design of the dome shape based
on a hyperelliptic function
Hyperelliptic functions
For the shape optimization purposes, the boundary shape
of a dome can be represented by a set of basis functions
where a, b, n are all real numbers greater than zero, x0
and y0 are the origin translation coordinate of the
hyperelliptic curve. Different shape curves such as
ellipse, circle, rectangle, lozenge, asteroid parabola
can be obtained by taking different a, b and n, and
the shape optimization is relatively easy to proceed by
optimizing these parameters.
PSO method
As a kind of heuristic optimization technique based on
swarm intelligence, PSO algorithm15–17 proposed by

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6 Journal of Composite Materials 0(0)

Table 1. Properties of carbon/epoxy unidirectional composite. Each particle represents the potential optimization
solution. The optimal solution is found in search
Property Carbon/epoxy
space through the information interaction between
Longitudinal modulus (GPa) 140 particles after a number of iteration steps. The algo-
Transverse modulus (GPa) 10 rithm first initializes a group of particles. For a D-
Shear modulus (GPa) 5 dimensional problem, the position and speed of the
Poisson’s ratio 0.3 particle i is expressed: Xi ¼ ðxi1 , xi2 , . . .iD ÞT and
Longitudinal tensile strength (MPa) 1500
Vi ¼ ðvi1 , vi2 , . . .iD ÞT . These particles continuously
track two extreme values, which are the individual
Transverse tensile strength (MPa) 50
extremum and the global one. The speed and the pos-
Longitudinal compressive strength (MPa) 1200
ition update iteratively following the two formulas (22)
Transverse compressive strength (MPa) 250 and (23).
In-plane shear strength (MPa) 70
Material density (kg/m3) 1800
vkþ1 k k k
id ¼ !  vid þ c1  rand1  ð pBestid  xid Þ þ c2  rand2 
 ð gBestkid  xkid Þ ð22Þ

Table 2. ANSYS input parameters.

xkþ1 k kþ1
id ¼ xid þ vid ð23Þ
Parameters Description
where vkid is the velocity of the particle i and xkid is the
Analysis type Structural
position of the particle i in the kth iteration; rand1 and
Element type Shell99
rand2 are the random number between 0 and 1; c1 and
Model type 3D, axi-symmetric c2 are accelerating factors; !is the inertia weight factor;
Boundary Dome opening nodes constrained pBestkid and gBestkid are the best position of the particle
condition in x-direction (Ux ¼ 0) and cylinder and the population, respectively. The searching algo-
opening nodes constrained in
rithm is as follows.
y-direction (Uy ¼ 0)
Loads Pressure loads applied to the inner
Step 1: Initialize a group of particles, set the initial pos-
elements of the FE model
ition and velocity for each of them.
Step 2: Calculate each particle’s fitness, i.e., the object-
ive function value.
Step 3: Compare each particle’s fitness with the fitness
of its experienced position pBestk1
id , the better one is
assigned to the current best position.
Step 4: Compare each particle’s fitness with the fitness
of experienced global best position gBestk1 id , the
better one is chosen as the current global best
position.
Step 5: Update the speed and position of particles,
respectively.
Step 6: Output the solution when the termination con-
dition is satisfied; otherwise returns to Step 2.

Figure 5. A finite element model.

Optimization problem descriptions
In this paper, the meridian line of a filament-wound
Kennedy and Eberhart has attracted much attention composite pressure vessel’s dome is assumed to be
these years. The idea of PSO comes from birds and hyperelliptic. The hyperelliptic function expression
fish population movement behavior research. In the equation (21), by adjusting the coordinates and the
algorithm, particles are guided by their own best origin position, can be rewritten as
known positions in the global search space and gath-
ered at the optimal position gradually. It can be applied  2 n  2 2 n  2 n
r þm z ¼ a ð24Þ
to black-box function cases since the information of
partial derivatives of objective functions is not required.

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Zhou et al. 7

Table 3. The optimum results for different slippage coefficients.

Slippage Shape factor,

coefficient Aspect ratio m Power index n S.F. (MNm/kg) Burst pressure (MPa) Volume (m3) Mass (kg)

 ¼ 0.5 1.142 1.265 0.1394 3.2794 2.0628 48.517

 ¼ 0.3 1.249 1.246 0.1385 3.1076 1.8729 42.022
 ¼ 0.1 1.387 1.269 0.1380 2.9564 1.6743 35.858
¼0 1.409 1.255 0.1377 2.9393 1.6658 35.557

where F.I. denotes the failure index. Once F.I. is greater

than or equal to 1.0, failure is predicted. At the polar hole,
the winding angle of the fiber equals to =2. And at the
equator, the winding angle and the fiber thickness are,
respectively, equal to those in the cylindrical drum part.
Then the optimization model can be expressed as
Find m, n
 
1 W
Min ¼ ¼ f ðm, nÞ
S:F: PV
8 2n
>
> ðr Þ þ ðm2 z2 Þn ¼ a2n
>
>
>
> mmin 5 m 5 mmax
>
>
>
>
< nmin 5 n 5 nmax
s:t: Fi i þ Fij i j 5 1 ð28Þ
>
>
>
> r ¼ r0 ,  ¼ =2
>
>
Figure 6. The optimum meridian lines of the dome with dif- >
> r ¼ rc ,  ¼ c
>
>
ferent slippage coefficients. :
r ¼ rc , t ¼ tc

where m ¼ a=b is the aspect ratio, a ð¼ rc Þ is the radius

of the cylindrical drum part being fixed in this research.
The power index n influences the curvature of the
dome. The parameters m and n are taken as the
design variables.
The shape factor which is defined as the product of inter-
nal pressure and the dome volume per dome mass
S:F: ¼ PV=W, is taken as the objective function. The aim
is to maximize this shape factor. The burst pressure P is
calculated based on Tsai–Wu failure criterion for the dome
being at the limit state, the interior volume V and the dome
mass Ware, respectively, calculated by the integrals below
Zz0
V¼ r2 dz
0 Method’’ section, a global best position ðm, nÞ is finally
Zz0
W¼ 2rtdz
0
The strength constraint, the Tsai–Wu failure criter-
ion equation (20) is rewritten as
F:I: Fi i þ Fij i j 5 1
The optimum design procedure
As mentioned before, the reciprocal of the shape factor
S.F. is taken as the objective function and the parameters
ðm, nÞ in the hyperelliptic function are chosen as the design
variables. The optimum solution is obtained by solving
equation (28) considering the strength constraint and
the geometrical constraints. For solving equation (28),
each pair ðm, nÞ is regarded as a particle and a certain
number of particles are initialized first. In particles
group, each one serves as a candidate solution. By
performing finite element (FE) analysis, the fitness
value, i.e., (1=S:F:) can be evaluated for each particle.
ð25Þ Following the algorithm of PSO mentioned in ‘‘PSO
obtained, which is the solution of equation (28). The
optimum design procedure is shown in Figure 4.
ð26Þ
Numerical results and discussion
Model descriptions
Consider a dome whose layers are the carbon/epoxy
ð27Þ composite material with fiber volume content
Vf ¼ 60 %. Properties of the material are shown in

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8 Journal of Composite Materials 0(0)
Table 4. Optimum results with different polar openings.
Polar opening (m) Aspect ratio m Power index n Shape factor, S.F. (MNm/kg) Burst pressure (MPa) Volume (m3) Mass (kg)
r0 ¼ 0.4 1.249
r0 ¼ 0.3 1.282
r0 ¼ 0.2 1.254
r0 ¼ 0.1 1.262
1
0.9
0.8
0.7
Dome height (m)
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5
Radius of parallel circles (m)
Figure 7. The optimum meridian line with different polar
openings.
Table 1. In the optimization procedure, the goal is to
maximize the shape factor by finding a pair of design
variables {m,n} which determine the dome shape. Only
fiber layers are considered for this example.
The radius of the cylindrical section is rc ¼ 1:0 m and
the radius of the end opening is r0 ¼ 0:4 m. The winding
layer at the cylindrical section is 3 mm thick each layer
and there are eight layers in total. The design parameters
m and n have the following ranges: 0:5  m  2:5,
0:5  n  2.The optimum design problem is solved by
using PSO together with a commercial package ANSYS.
Table 2 shows the input parameters for ANSYS.
A finite element model of a quarter initial solution is
shown in Figure 5. A cylindrical region is attached to
the composite dome in the FE analysis. In the FE
model, the fiber angle of each element is determined
by the results of Figure 3, and the fiber layer thickness
is predicted based on equations (17) to (19).
Results and discussion
Table 3 lists the optimum results for different slippage coef-
ficients. As compared with the geodesic winding ( ¼ 0),
the non-geodesic winding can achieve better performances
by the optimum design. It is shown that larger slippage
coefficients can produce larger shape factors, accompany-
ing larger burst pressure and larger volume. The reason is
that with larger slippage coefficient, fibers can distribute
1.246 0.1385 3.1076 1.8729 42.022
1.189 0.1354 3.3688 1.7914 44.580
1.144 0.1148 3.3322 1.7991 52.193
0.931 0.1069 3.0818 1.5839 45.664
more flexibly, providing possibilities of getting better per-
r0=0.4m formances. Figure 6 shows the optimum dome shape with
r0=0.3m different slippage coefficients. The results obtained agree
r0=0.2m with the conclusion in Lei et al.’s study8 in which the
r0=0.1m meridian is constructed by connecting a set of points.
Influences of the polar opening on the S.F. are dis-
played in Table 4. The allowable coefficient of friction
is assumed to be 0.3. It is observed that a larger polar
opening corresponds to a better shape factor. Figure 7
shows the optimum meridian line of the dome with
different polar openings.
0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
Conclusions
An optimal design method of filament-wound composite
pressure vessels considering both geodesic and non-
geodesic winding patterns is presented in this paper.
A hyperelliptic function is taken as the basis function for
optimizing the dome shape. In the optimization modeling,
the shape factor is the objective, and the aspect ratio
and the power index in the hyperelliptic function are the
design variables. Since determining the winding angle
and the fiber layer thickness is not straightforward, a
multi-micro-cone approximation approach is proposed.
For evaluating the strength constraint condition and the
objective function, finite element analysis is performed.
ANSYS software is employed for the stress analysis and
the burst pressure calculation of the carbon/epoxy dome.
PSO method is utilized to find the solution. It is shown
that the hyperelliptic dome is very suitable for dome
shape optimization, and the non-geodesic winding pat-
tern can provide better performances than the geodesic
winding pattern. Influences of the slippage coefficients
and the polar openings are also discussed. Larger slippage
coefficients or larger polar opening can produce larger
shape factors.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial sup-
port for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article: This work is supported by the National Natural
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Zhou et al. 9

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