Investigation of a passenger car's dynamic response due to a flywheel-based kinetic energy recovery system.

With the advent of flywheel-based kinetic energy recovery systems in automotive applications new safety issues arise as a consequence of the flywheel's high rotational speed. While the special structural safety requirements of the components are well discussed in the literature, there is still little research on the influence of gyroscopic effects on vehicle dynamics. The aim of this paper is to investigate the influence of a typical high-speed flywheel on the driving dynamics of an average passenger car. To this end the equations of motion of a gyroscope are derived, which relate the vehicle's roll, pitch and yaw rate with the transverse torque acting on the flywheel. These equations are implemented in a commercial vehicle dynamics simulation program in order to determine the reaction torques acting on the vehicle within a representative range of driving situations. Numerical simulations indicate that the gyroscopic effect can be considered insignificant in standard driving situations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]