Flexyshell: A New Structural Principle.

 

This site introduces a novel structural concept developed by a small, dedicated group of engineers who are focused on solving the toughest problems in high-pressure gas storage. This effort is led by Valeriy Ordynat, Mechanical and Piping Engineer with over 20 years of direct experience in pressure vessel and piping design and maintenance.

Flexyshell became the working name of the concept — and it simply stuck.  On this site, we will stick to Flexyshell too, mainly to save you from sitting through phrases like "pressure vessel leveraging a flexible membrane and external tendon network", as  that would be boring for everyone.

Flexyshell is a new class of modular pressure vessels and structural elements based on one unifying idea — that the strongest and safest structures are those working purely in tension. The principle is simple — but it changes everything.


When pressure acts on the flexible membrane, all the forces resolve into tension only, with no compression, bending, or shear.
Flexyshell is lighter, safer, and far more resilient than conventional tanks, pontoons, or composite vessels.

Because all loads are carried through tensioned membranes and tendons, failure modes are benign — the structure simply loses pressure rather than fracturing.

A single Flexyshell module can:

  • Safely store gases such as hydrogen at medium to high pressure;

  • Serve as a buoyant structural block in marine or offshore platforms;

  • Form pressurized housings for subsea or floating equipment.

  • Be used across energy, marine, and infrastructure applications, enabling new kinds of offshore hydrogen hubs, floating foundations, and energy-storage systems.

 

You are invited to explore the concept of Flexyshell, examine the data, and join us in shaping the future of high-pressure energy containment.

 

How the Concept Was Born

"Every innovation starts with a question that refuses to go away.
This is mine.

I’ve spent almost twenty years as a pressure vessel and piping engineer in the oil and gas industry. My professional world revolved around precision — every wall thickness, weld, and stress value had to be justified by calculation. If a vessel was designed to code, fabricated correctly, and verified through inspection, it was safe. That was the discipline I trusted.

Then I entered the emerging field of clean energy — hydrogen storage and transport — and encountered something that didn’t fit this engineering logic. The hydrogen storage systems considered “state of the art,” the Composite Overwrapped Pressure Vessels (COPVs), could not actually be designed or verified the same way steel pressure vessels are.
Even the most advanced COPVs, produced under strict certification, carry an unavoidable risk of sudden, catastrophic failure — not because of poor workmanship, but because of how they are built. For an engineer used to determinism and predictability, that was deeply troubling.
I kept thinking: It can’t be right that a certified pressure vessel can simply explode without warning.

That persistent doubt led to the birth of Flexyshell.

While exploring alternatives, I began discussing the idea with a few engineering colleagues and friends. Together we refined the concept, questioned the assumptions, and tested the structural logic. The principle that emerged was simple but transformative — decoupling the stresses: allowing a thin, flexible membrane to take hoop tension, and external tendons to take axial loads.
This made it possible to avoid the brittle, unpredictable failure modes of rigid shells altogether.

After running preliminary analyses and verifying the mechanics, I filed a provisional patent under my name — establishing Flexyshell as a new structural approach to hydrogen storage.

At this stage, the concept has been validated through engineering calculations and research.
The next step is practical: building and testing prototypes, confirming performance at scale, and advancing the technology from a proven principle to a fully engineered product."

                                                                                                                                    VALERIY ORDYNAT, Inventor of the concept

Vision: Implementation and Transformation

The vision for Flexyshell is simple: to see this concept implemented at the scale the hydrogen economy truly needs.

Flexyshell is not a niche product; it is a generalized structural system with the potential to transform infrastructure globally:

  • Extreme Scalability: We aim to build pressure vessels that are tens or even hundreds of meters long, enabling the cost-effective bulk transport of hydrogen by sea and the construction of massive, flexible stationary storage hubs.

  • Structural Integration: Beyond simple storage, we envision Flexyshell tanks serving as load-bearing chassis in rail and truck transport, acting as structural buoyancy elements in offshore platforms, and creating integrated hulls for hydrogen-powered marine vessels.

  • Safety and Sustainability: Our goal is to set a new standard for safety, where controlled wrinkling replaces explosive failure, and where the full recyclability of the thermoplastic and metallic components supports a genuinely green industry.

Now it is time to collaborate with partners — engineers, researchers, investors, and organizations — who see the potential of this principle and want to help bring it to reality.

If you are one of those people who look at something unconventional and think, “That could actually work” — we’d like to hear from you.