Electrified Integrated Kinetic Energy Storage

Sammanfattning: The electric car is a technically efficient driveline, although it is demanding in terms of the primary energy source. Most trips are below 50 km and the mean power required for maintaining speed is quite low, but the system has to be able to both provide long range and high maximum power for acceleration. By separating power and energy handling in a hybrid driveline, the primary energy source, e.g. a battery can be optimised for specific energy (decreasing costs and material usage). Kinetic energy storage in the form of flywheels can handle the short, high power bursts of acceleration and decceleration with high efficiency.This thesis focuses on the design and construction of flywheels in which an electric machine and a low-loss magnetic suspension are considered an integral part of the composite shell, in an effort to increase specific energy. A method of numerically optimising shrink-fitted composite shells was developed and implemented in software, based on a plane stress assumption, with a grid search optimiser. A composite shell was designed, analysed numerically and constructed, with an integrated permanent magnet synchronous machine. Passive axial lift bearings were optimised, analysed numerically for losses and lift force, and verified with experiments. Active radial electromagnets optimised for high stiffness per ohmic loss were built and analysed in terms of force and stiffness, both numerically and experimentally. Electronics and a high-speed measurement system were designed to drive the magnetic bearings and the electric machine. The control of these systems were implemented in an FPGA, and a notch-filter was designed to suppress eigenfrequencies to achieve levitation of the rotor. The spin-down losses of the flywheel in vacuum were found to be 1.7 W/Wh, evaluated at 1000 rpm.A novel switched reluctance machine concept was developed for hollow cylinder flywheels. This class of flywheels are shaft-less, in an effort to avoid the shaft-to-rim connection. A small-scale prototype was built and verified to correspond well to analytical and numerical models, by indirect measurement of the inductance through a system identification method.