Optimization of composite overwrapped pressure vessel stacking sequences via genetic algorithms: A triadic evaluation of Tsai-Wu, Hashin, and Puck failure criteria

Composite overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs) are central to high-pressure hydrogen storage, where low mass and structural integrity under burst conditions are simultaneously critical. Optimising their stacking sequences is difficult because the governing failure mechanism changes through the wall thickness, and because established failure criteria diverge appreciably under the multiaxial stress states produced by internal pressure. Designing to the most critical predicted mode is standard engineering practice; what is not established is how to embed that practice inside an automated optimisation loop, and what it delivers when it is. This study integrates the Tsai–Wu interactive quadratic, Hashin mode-separated fibre/matrix, and Puck inter-fibre failure (IFF) criteria into a triadic envelope the point-wise maximum failure index over a discretised radial profile and places that envelope directly in the fitness function of a genetic algorithm (GA), so that the governing criterion is resolved radially and per layer rather than assumed in advance. Ply stresses are obtained from a Lekhnitskii-type thick-walled multilayered anisotropic cylinder solution under generalized plane strain with closed-end axial equilibrium. Applied to a benchmark linerless (Type V) cylindrical COPV of 174 mm internal radius and 175 MPa burst pressure, the triadic formulation yields a 36-layer configuration of 54.24 mm wall thickness, with a maximum combined failure index of 1.12 and a layer exceedance rate of 5.6%. Evaluated under identical design constraints, this halves the cross-criterion exceedance rate relative to the Hashin-only (1.18, 11.1%) and Puck-only (1.07, 11.1%) designs, at a wall thickness 5.6% greater than the least conservative Tsai–Wu-only design (0.97, 0%). The balance of ply orientations across the low-, mid- and high-angle ranges is an explicit constraint of the fitness function rather than an emergent property of the envelope; holding it fixed across all four runs isolates the effect of the failure measure itself. The analytical solver is verified against the closed-form Lamé solution in the isotropic limit and against the boundary, interface and axial-equilibrium conditions of the multilayer problem.