Modal analysis for filament wound pressure vessels filled with fluid

Filament wound pressure vessels have been extensively used in many engineering fields, especially aerospace industry. Vibration-based damage detection methods have the potential to be employed to monitor the health status of the structures based on the fact that damage occurred in a structure would result in changes in its structural dynamic characteristics. However the presence of fluid will affect the dynamic response of this type of vessel structures. Due to the liquid mass decrease during its service, the whole system is considered a time-variant system in terms of its dynamic response even the structure itself remains free of damage, which cause problems for vibration-based damage detection method that utilized dynamic response change to identify damage. Therefore it is critical to understand how the change of the liquid height level influences the dynamic response of the coupled fluid–structure system. This work describes the FEM analysis and an experimental study on the dynamic response of filament wound pressure vessels filled with liquid of different heights and provides the primary information that can be used for vibration-based damage detection.