Risks and safety level of composite cylinders

• DOI: 10.1016/j.ijhydene.2017.01.145
• Publication Date: 2017-02-21T09:32:06Z
• Authors: B. Becker; G.W. Mair
• Keywords: Probabilistic risk assessment; System safety

The increasing amount of composite transport systems for hydrogen leads to new and therefore unknown potential hazards for general public. Due to lack of experience, risks of new technologies tend to be rated higher than existing familiar applications. An approach for probabilistic safety assessment of technologies or products requires the definition of minimal acceptable reliability levels. This ensures that the probability of a critical failure with a certain consequence is limited to an acceptable risk. But what is the acceptable risk and which risk results from specific probabilities of occurrence and consequences? This is always a very complex question. The following example is based on a probabilistic approach for safety assessment of composite cylinders developed at the BAM (Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing).