This study focuses on the critical connection area between type IV hydrogen storage vessels and external valves, which is commonly referred to as the BOSS structure. The novel BOSS structures were proposed to further ensure the safety of pressure vessels. In order to identify optimal structure that meet industrial requirements, finite element models were performed to analyze and compare the effectiveness of the proposed models in terms of strength, fatigue, and sealing performance. Some influences were discussed, including the angle of inclination of the stop-rotation platform and the number of sealing grooves in the BOSS structures. The results showed that the fatigue life of the proposed BOSS structures can exceed the design life of 30,000 cycles using austenitic stainless steel S31603. The maximum contact stresses were higher than the operating pressure of 58 MPa. Additionally, The BOSS structure model designed with a stop-rotation platform featuring a 65° tilt angle and two sealing grooves had the lowest mean square deviation of contact stress, which was 13.47 MPa, indicating reliable sealing performance.

An integral manufacturing process with hot drawing and cold flow forming was proposed for large-diameter seamless steel gas cylinders. The main purpose of this study was to find out the effects of the manufacturing process on the microstructure and mechanical properties of gas cylinders made of 34CrMo4 steel. Two preformed cylinders were produced by hot drawing. One cylinder was then further manufactured by cold flow forming. The experiments were carried out using three types of material sample, namely, base material (BM), hot drawing cylinder (HD), and cold flow-formed cylinder (CF). Tensile and impact tests were performed to examine the mechanical properties of the cylinders in longitudinal and transverse directions. Microstructure evolution was analyzed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) to reveal the relation between the mechanical properties and the microstructure of the material. It is found that the mechanical properties of the 34CrMo4 steel gas cylinders were significantly improved after hot drawing and flow forming plus a designed heat treatment, compared with the base material. The observations of microstructure features such as grain size, subgrain boundaries, and residual strain support the increase in mechanical properties due to the proposed manufacturing process.

Compared with the fatigue properties of the material (Inconel Alloy 690), the real fatigue lives of tubes are more meaningful in the fatigue design and assessment of steam generator (SG) tube bundles. However, it is almost impossible to get a satisfactory result by conducting fatigue tests on the tube directly. A tube with a uniform and thin wall easily fails near the clamping ends under cyclic loading due to the stress concentration. In this research, a set-up for fatigue tests of real tubes is proposed to overcome the stress concentration. With the set-up, low cycle fatigue tests were conducted in accordance with an existing fatigue design curve for Alloy 690. Strain control mode was applied with fully reversed push–pull loading under different strain amplitudes (0.15%, 0.2%, 0.3%, and 0.4%). A favourable result was obtained, and the low cycle fatigue behavior was investigated. The results showed that the fatigue life tested by the real tube was below the strain–life curve of Alloy 690 which was fitted by conventional solid specimens. A cyclic hardening behavior was found by the cyclic stress–strain curve when compared with the monotonic stress–strain curve.