COCOLIH2T - Composite COnformal LIquid H2 Tank

Project - Open
EASA participation
Advisory Board Member
Research Domain
Environment

The safe and efficient storage of H2 on-board future aircraft is the essential enabler of H2 technologies and will be one of the most complex aerospace engineering challenges that the industry has ever faced. 

COCOLIH2T is proposing a disruptive concept focused on reducing the impact of the tank’s weight and volume within an aircraft, while ensuring system safety.

COCOLIH2T will not only develop a safe composite and vacuum insulated LH2 tank for the aviation sector but has the ambition to go beyond by designing and manufacturing a conformal tank through novel fabrication technologies enabling a reduction of more than 60% in production energy consumption, at least 50% in production time leading to significantly lower manufacturing costs.

Additionally, the proposed structure of the tank, based on a multi-material thermoplastic composite concept, is intended to facilitate aircraft structural integration to support overall system weight reduction compared with conventional tank configurations.

COCOLIH2T is proposing a disruptive concept focused to reduce the impact of the tank’s weight and volume within an aircraft, while ensuring safe system functionality.

Project objectives

  1. Down-select and mature the right materials for tank walls, Multi-Layer Insulation (MLI) and permeation barrier.
  2. Design and develop a composite conformal LH2 tank, including thermal and pressure management.
  3. Manufacture the composite and conformal LH2 tank.
  4. Design and develop a tank refuelling, metering, gauging, and gas leak-detection system for safe system functioning.
  5. Design and develop a lightweight and robust tank health monitoring system capable of working in harsh environment of the tank over its lifecycle and automated inspection system.
  6. Integrate and demonstrate the entire LH2 tank system.
  7. Understand life cycle and safety impact of tank design decisions and develop a suitable inspection method.

Expected outcomes

  1. Demonstration of the construction of a scalable tank design enabling the cost-efficient growth of a tank up to 150 kg and beyond.
  2. Development of a vacuum insulated, low-pressure, variable section box-shaped LH2 tank for a potential installation within the aircraft empennage or beneath the passenger floor.
  3. Development of a conformable multi-material tank concept, manufactured by automated and out of autoclave (OoA) production technologies.
  4. Development of a set of subsystems and procedures to assure the safe functioning of the system, and being able to perform real-time monitoring of its state.
  5. Evaluation of the suitability of various SHM capabilities including structural monitoring, health state awareness, damage detection and location for monitored structures, shape sensing and centre-of-gravity calculations.
  6. Successful experiments on the two demonstrators.
  7. Realisation of a safety analysis, a durability analysis and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).