INCREASING HYDRAULIC ENERGY STORAGE CAPACITY:
FLYWHEEL-ACCUMULATOR
James D. Van de Ven
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, 100 Institute Rd., Worcester, MA 01609, USA
vandeven@wpi.edu
Abstract
The energy storage density of
hydraulic accumulators is significantly lower than energy storage
devices in other energy domains. As a novel solution to improve the
energy density of hydraulic systems, a flywheel-accumulator is
presented. Energy is stored in the flywheel-accumulator by compressing
a gas, increasing the moment of inertia of the flywheel by adding
hydraulic fluid, and by increasing the angular velocity of the
flywheel. Through a numerical model of the energy flows in the system,
the energy storage of the flywheel-accumulator was demonstrated to be
approximately 10 times greater than a conventional accumulator.
Furthermore, the flywheel-accumulator allows the hydraulic system
pressure to be independent of the quantity of energy stored. The
integral flywheel-accumulator presents numerous future research
challenges, yet offers the potential to transform and enable numerous
applications including plug-in hydraulic hybrid vehicles.
Keywords: hydraulicenergystorage, flywheel,accumulator, hydraulichybridvehicle
BACK
©2009 Fluid Power Net
All rights reserved. Disclaimer