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Design Trade-Offs and Feasibility Assessment of a Novel One-Body, Laminated-Rotor Flywheel Switched Reluctance Machine

Rocca, Roberto; Papadopoulos, Savvas; Rashed, Mohamed; Prassinos, George; Giulii Capponi, Fabio; Galea, Michael

Authors

Roberto Rocca

Mohamed Rashed

George Prassinos

Fabio Giulii Capponi

Michael Galea



Abstract

In a bid to respond to the challenges being faced in the installation of flywheel-based electric energy storage systems (EESSs) in customer-side facilities, namely high safety, high energy/power densities and low cost, research work towards the development of a novel, one-body, laminated-rotor flywheel, based on a switched reluctance machine (OBOLAR-Fly SR machine) is presented, where the laminated rotor provides both the energy storage and motor/generator functions. The one-body architecture improves compactness and robustness. Besides, the rotor’s laminated body ensures inherently high safety. From the design perspective, the rotor’s dual purpose causes the traditional electrical machines design aspects, such as power development, cooling, losses, torque ripple, etc., to clash with the typical requirements of a flywheel, namely in-vacuum operation and moment of inertia. This results in six main trade-offs to be addressed during the design process: rotor material, speed ratio, number of drive phases, split ratio, optimal vacuum level, and controller hysteresis band. A 60 kW, 2.2 kWh OBOLAR-Fly SR system is developed with a twofold objective: (1) provide an in-depth description of the six bespoke design trade-offs and give some useful guidelines to tackle them; (2) prove the OBOLAR-Fly concept and compare the prototype’s performance with the current state of the art flywheels. Preliminary experimental results prove the viability of the OBOLAR idea and show its competitiveness in terms of efficiency and power density. On the other hand, a gap in energy density to be filled in future research works is highlighted.

Citation

Rocca, R., Papadopoulos, S., Rashed, M., Prassinos, G., Giulii Capponi, F., & Galea, M. (2020). Design Trade-Offs and Feasibility Assessment of a Novel One-Body, Laminated-Rotor Flywheel Switched Reluctance Machine. Energies, 13(22), Article 5857. https://doi.org/10.3390/en13225857

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Nov 7, 2020
Online Publication Date Nov 10, 2020
Publication Date Nov 10, 2020
Deposit Date Nov 16, 2020
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Energies
Publisher MDPI
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 13
Issue 22
Article Number 5857
DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/en13225857
Keywords customer-side installation; energy storage system; high-speed; integrated flywheel; interference fit; laminated rotor; machine design; one body flywheel; switched reluctance drive
Public URL http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/2701471

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Design Trade-Offs And Feasibility Assessment Of A Novel One-Body, Laminated-Rotor Flywheel Switched Reluctance Machine (5.3 Mb)
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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.




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