Investigation & comparison of the integration of flywheel energy storage in hybrid electric and electric vehicles using bond graphs

Abstract

Over the past few years Hybrid Electric and Electric propulsion systems have found significant attention as the most plausible substitute to fossil fuel based engines. Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEV) have been around for more than a decade and extensive research has been taken out to make these vehicles more efficient. With advances in technology, manufacturers such as Tesla and Chevrolet have successfully launched a number of Electric Vehicles (EV) in the past 5 years. In despite of all this success, HEVs and EVs currently face challenges in energy storage systems (ESS) with regard to a variety of parameters and to overcome these issues research has been done on different types of ESS systems to extend the range of such vehicles. Flywheel Energy Storage Systems (FESS) have regained interest in the last decade and the application of kinetic energy recovery system (KERS) in the Formula 1 has reinforced the case of using FESS in HEV and EV. In this study, the integration of an FESS system within a hybrid electric propulsion and an electric propulsion system is considered and with the help of Bond-Graphs as a multidisciplinary modelling tool the impact of this integration is analyzed and compared with each other.