System-Level Design and Verification Concepts for Hydrogen-fueled Vehicles: Fireworthiness

Safety is inherently a systems-level engineering challenge. The system design determines the placement of the storage system, the plumbing and pressure regulation, the pressure relief device(s), and the electronic controls. Vehicle crashes are common and must be accommodated in the design. It is anticipated by all that there will be a top-level vehicle Crashworthiness standard for hydrogen vehicles similar to the U.S. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) 301 for gasoline or FMVSS 303 for Natural Gas (NG). These standards limit the amount of fuel leakage after a crash and thus contribute to fire safety. The hydrogen fuel system (and fuel cell) can also be attacked by fire. A fire could result from an ignited hydrogen leak, a gasoline pool fire from an impacting vehicle, or from a fire in the passenger compartment started from an electrical, match, cigarette, or other ignition source. A vehicle-level, performance-based Fireworthiness Standard is proposed.