Design and Analysis of Flywheel for Weight Optimization

There are many causes of failure of flywheel. Maximum tensile and bending stresses induced in the rim and tensile stresses gets induced in the arm under the action of centrifugal forces are the main causes of flywheel failure. In this work stress evaluation in the rim and arm are studied using finite element method and results are validated by analytical calculations .The models of flywheel having solid, four and six no. arms are developed. The FE analysis is carried out for different loading conditions on the flywheel for different cases the maximum Von-mises stresses and deflection in the rim are determined. From this analysis it is analyzed that Maximum stresses induced are in the rim and arm junction. Due to application of tangential forces, maximum bending stresses occurs near the hub end of the arm. It is also observed that for low angular velocity the effect of gravity on stresses and deflection of rim and arm is predominant. The FEM formulation carried out in ANSYS workbench R14.