order to detect the internal defects of carbon fiber wrapped hydrogen storage cylinder,a delamination defect model of carbon fiber wrapped hydrogen storage cylinder was established. Based on the infrared thermal imaging,the internal defects of the cylinder were simulated and analyze,and the influence of defect length,defect depth,defect shape and multiple defects on the peak temperature difference of thermal image was studied. The results show that the internal thermal excitation method can detect the delamination defects of carbon fiberwrapped cylinders,and the suitable observation time is 35~60 s. As the de-fect size increases,the thermal image temperature difference increases,and the cold spot above the defect gradually becomes obvious. The peak value of thermal image temperature difference increases approximately proportionally to the defect length,and the peak value of thermal image temperature difference increases slowly and tends to be stable with the increase of defect thickness and defectdepth. Under the multi-defect conditions,as the radial spacing of the defects increases,the overall length of the defects increases,and the difficulty of heat transfer increases,resulting in the increase in the thermal image temperature difference. When the radial spacing continues to increase,the defect overlaps are reduced,and the heat is more easily trans-mitted to the surface of cylinder,and then the peak value of the thermal image temperature difference decreases. As the axial spacing of the defects increases,the difficulty of heat transfer from the defects to the surface of cylinder increases,resulting in an increase in the peak value of the thermal image temperature difference of defects. Compared with the triangular,rectangular and elliptical defects,the thermal image temperature difference of rectangular defect is the highest,followed by elliptical de-fect,and triangular defectisthe lowest. The research results can provide theoretical reference for the defect detection and safety evaluation of carbon fiber wrappedcylinders.