Study on rollover prevention of heavy-duty vehicles by using flywheel energy storage systems

Abstract

This paper deals with rollover prevention of a vehicle using a flywheel. The authors have been proposed to use a flywheel as a stabilizer for a heavy vehicle by using gyroscopic effect. A typical flywheel is composed of a rotating disk and gimbals which absorb the gyroscopic effect while supporting the rotor. To produce the gyroscopic effect to stabilize the heavy vehicle, the proposed system constrains a gimbal when the roll of the vehicle becomes large and reach beyond the threshold value. The stability of the heavy vehicle with the proposed flywheel system is examined by multibody dynamics simulations and the experiment. It was found that the proposed control system is effective for rollover prevention. © Springer-Verlag 2013.