High-pressure hydrogen tanks which are composed of an aluminum alloy liner and a carbon fiber wound layer are currently the most popular means to store hydrogen on vehicles. Nevertheless, the aluminum alloy is easily affected by high-pressure hydrogen, which leads to the appearance of hydrogen embrittlement (HE). Serious HE of hydrogen tank represents a huge dangers to the safety of vehicles and passengers. It is critical and timely to outline the mainstream approach and point out potential avenues for further investigation of HE. An analysis, including the mechanism (including hydrogen-enhanced local plasticity model, hydrogen-enhanced decohesion mechanism and hydrogen pressure theory), the detection (including slow strain rate test, linearly increasing stress test and so on) and methods for the prevention of HE on aluminum alloys of hydrogen vehicles (such as coating) are systematically presented in this work. Moreover, the entire experimental detection procedures for HE are expounded. Ultimately, the prevention measures are discussed in detail. It is believed that further prevention measures will rely on the integration of multiple prevention methods. Successfully solving this problem is of great significance to reduce the risk of failure of hydrogen storage tanks and improve the reliability of aluminum alloys for engineering applications in various industries including automotive and aerospace.

Traditional thickness-prediction methods underestimate the actual dome thickness at polar openings, leading to the inaccurate prediction of the load-bearing capacity of composite hydrogen storage vessels. A method of thickness prediction for the dome section of composite hydrogen storage vessels was proposed, which involved fiber slippage and tow redistribution. This method considered the blocking effect of the port on sliding fiber tows and introduced the thickness correlation to predict the dome thickness at polar openings. The arc length corresponding to the parallel circle radius was calculated, and then, the actual radius values corresponding to the bandwidth were obtained by the interpolation method. The predicted thickness values were compared with the actual measured thickness. The maximum relative error of the predicted thickness was 4.19%, and the mean absolute percentage error was 2.04%. The results show that the present method had a higher prediction accuracy. Eventually, this prediction method was used to perform progressive damage analysis on vessels. By comparing with the results of the cubic spline function method, the analysis results of the present method approached the actual case. This showed that the present method improved the accuracy of the design.