Properties of fiber composites for advanced flywheel energy storage devices

The performance of commercial high-performance fibers is examined for application to flywheel power supplies. It is shown that actual delivered performance depends on multiple factors such as inherent fiber strength, strength translation and stress-rupture lifetime. Experimental results for recent stress-rupture studies of carbon fibers will be presented and compared with other candidate reinforcement materials. Based on an evaluation of all of the performance factors, it is concluded that carbon fibers are preferred for highest performance and E-glass fibers for lowest cost. The inferior performance of the low-cost E-glass fibers can be improved to some extent by retarding the stress-corrosion of the material due to moisture and practical approaches to mitigating this corrosion are discussed. Many flywheel designs are limited not by fiber failure, but by matrix-dominated failure modes. Unfortunately, very few experimental results for stress-rupture under transverse tensile loading are available. As a consequence, significant efforts are made in flywheel design to avoid generating any transverse tensile stresses. Recent results for stress-rupture of a carbon fiber/epoxy composite under transverse tensile load reveal that these materials are surprisingly durable under the transverse loading condition and that some radial tensile stress could be tolerated in flywheel applications.