Development of a Flexible Lightweight Hydraulic-Pneumatic Flywheel System for Wind Turbine Rotors

In this paper, the design of a flexible piston accumulator for application in a hydraulic-pneumatic flywheel system in a wind turbine rotor is presented. The flywheel system enables a wind turbine to vary the inertia of its rotor blades to control the power output and, most importantly, to influence the vibratory behaviour of wind turbine components. The method used for designing the flexible accumulator is based on the one hand on test results of a flexible piston accumulator prototype, and on the other hand, on simulation results of a model of a flexible piston accumulator. As a result, a design of flexible piston accumulators for application in the flywheel system is implemented and compared with the design of conventional steel accumulators. Due to the proposed design of the flywheel system, the impact on the mechanical loads of a wind turbine is analysed. The simulation results show that the new design of the piston accumulators causes a lower impact on the mechanical loads of the wind turbine than a previously published design of piston accumulators. It is further shown that the considered wind turbine can take on the flywheel system without the need for reinforcements in the rotor blades.