Flywheel Energy Storage with Mechanical Input-Output for Regenerative Braking

The system presented in this paper allows the direct transfer of kinetic energy of a vehicle’s motion to a flywheel and vice-versa. For braking, a cable winds onto a pulley geared to the vehicle’s propulsion driveshaft as it unwinds from another pulley geared to the flywheel and then operates in reverse for the transfer of energy in the opposite direction. The cable windings are in one plane resulting in an effective pulley radius that increases when the cable is winding onto it and decreases when unwinding from it. Thus, an increasing driven-to-driving pulley velocity ratio is obtained during a period of energy transfer in either direction. A dynamic analysis simulating the process was developed. Its application is illustrated with a numerical solution based on specific assumed values of system parameters.