Abstract: A successful transition to renewable energy sources requires engineering solutions that push boundaries.  For the scales required for useful levels of Liquid Hydrogen energy storage, codified design procedures no longer apply and there is no experience, in the laboratory or in the field, with vessels of this magnitude.  The goal of making Hydrogen the energy carrier of renewable resources like wind and solar to distant end users depends on the ability of the established community to provide economically designed large-scale containments.

For the structural engineer, investigation of the stability of these shell structures under vacuum demands a careful use of modern analysis methods.  These tools are the bridge from our experimental/code based past to a sufficient understanding of these only-imagined shell structures to ensure a robust factor of safety on buckling.

Bio:  Elizabeth graduated from Purdue with a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering in 1999.  Her work tracing structural instabilities using dynamic methods was performed under the direction of Professors W.F. Chen (Civil) and J.F. Doyle (Aeronautics and Astronautics).  She went on to spend 10 years in failure analysis at Exponent until she joined Chicago Bridge and Iron in 2011.  At CB&I she establishes guidelines for characterizing the stability of some of the largest thin-walled structures in the world.