Design and Analysis of Flywheel Energy Storage System's Structure

This dissertation, entitled "Design and Analysis of Flywheel Energy Storage
System's Structure" is to fulfill the requirement of Final Year Project II. The objectives
of this project are to study and understand the principle of operation of the Flywheel
Energy Storage System (FESS), to design new structure of horizontal FESS, to simulate
the structural mechanics of the FESS, and to analyse static and dynamic loads on the
FESS structure. FESS is a system which is targeted to be implemented and utilized as
potential alternative energy in Malaysia, as the issue of oil and gas scarcity and price
high is one of the major problems nowadays. The need for a clean and reliable energy
from FESS is essential to reduce the green house gas emissions. FESS aims to supply
uninterruptible power supply (UPS) to any system that is driven by electrical motor. The
design approach of the system's structure includes the flywheel design calculations and
shaft design calculations. Detailed design is created and shaft loading analyses are
executed using the Autodesk Inventor Professional Software. The results obtained from
calculations are compared with the results generated by Autodesk Inventor Professional
Software and ANSYS 11.0 Software. To further verify the analyses, simulations of the
static and dynamic analyses are conducted using the ANSYS 11.0 Software. The final
design specifications for FESS show that the most suitable material for a flywheel disc
is stainless steel, with an outer diameter of 0.20 m and a shaft with 0.4 m length and
0.05 m diameter which produce 4392 rpm in its operation. The amount of kinetic energy
that can be stored for a given power of 37285 W is 3.98 kJ. As one of the essential
component in the FESS, the shaft design is observed to be safe to function, as it
produces a negligible value of deflection and does not break during rotation. Further
analysis of the electromagnetic flux induced by the system is recommended, besides
generating several configurations of FESS which can give the highest efficiency to the
system.