Growing concerns about the environmental impact of aviation have sparked interest in hydrogen aircraft as a greener alternative. Hydrogen can be used to power existing turbofan engines or electrical motors via a fuel cell, eliminating carbon emissions not only during flight, but also during production, provided renewable energy sources are used. However, adopting hydrogen as fuel introduces technological challenges, particularly with regard to on-board storage. Integral tanks, which are part of the aircraft's main structure, seem promising but existing designs show limitations in their integration with the airframe and insulation capabilities.

To address these issues, this study proposes an integral tank concept featuring a double wall architecture with vacuum insulation. The main advantage of this design is the use of an external stiffened wall that can be directly connected to the remaining airframe. In addition, having stiffeners on the outside ensures the required space for systems routing and addresses concerns with the crash worthiness of the structure. A parametric method, coupled with finite element analysis is developed to size the external load bearing wall, enabling quick analysis and mass estimations of different tank configurations. The method consists of a sizing optimization with the objective of minimizing the structural mass under constraints on the strength, buckling stability and fatigue behaviour.

The feasibility of the concept is then evaluated on an aft tank for a short/medium range aircraft in configurations with and without a forward tank. Preliminary results under this realistic scenario point to fuel containment efficiencies of up to 0.71, which are consistent with existing designs. Moreover, buckling stability is identified as the critical design criterion, highlighting the importance of using a stiffened shell design. These findings show the viability of the proposed concept from a structural standpoint and provide the basis for further research. The optimum solution at an aircraft level can be obtained by integrating the developed framework into a multidisciplinary aircraft design tool.