Design and Analysis of Flywheel for Different Geometries and Materials

Flywheel is a mechanical device used to store energy and utilize it whenever it required. Flywheels find its application in number of fields ranging from IC engine of 2-wheeler to more powerful jet engines. Increase in Kinetic Energy of flywheel is the most critical factor for the design engineers. The literature survey shows that flywheel can be redesign for mass optimization which results light weight and Increase in storage capacity. In this project work, an attempt is made to redesign the existing flywheel in terms of its geometry and different materials. Different cross sections of the flywheel are designed using 3D designing software Solidworks 2015. Finite Element analysis is used to calculate the Maximum Rotational speed the flywheel and the amount of Kinetic energy stored at that speed. The results shows that flywheel with Triangular cross sectional geometry and made of S-glass epoxy composite material stores highest Kinetic Energy per unit mass compare to all other combination of Geometries and materials. This New design of flywheel saves weight by 65.252kg compared to existing designs.