Study of damping in 5 kWh superconductor flywheel energy storage system using a piezoelectric actuator

A 5kWh superconductor flywheel energy storage system (SFES) has advantages in terms of high electrical energy density, environmental affinity and long life. However, the SFES has disadvantage that electromagnetic damper is needed because superconducting bearings do not have enough damping coefficient. The purpose of this experiment is to develop a method of damping the vibration of the SFES.A piezoelectric actuator was attached to a superconducting bearing system for feasibility test in order to make it as a damper of the SFES. For this experiment, a cylindrical permanent magnet (PM) 40mm in diameter and 10mm height was used as a rotor, a high-temperature superconductor bulk (HTS bulk) with dimensions 40mm×40mm×15mm was used as a stator, and two vibration exciters (an upper and a lower vibration exciter) and a piezoelectric actuator were used. The PM was fixed on the upper vibration exciter. The HTS bulk was fixed on either the lower vibration exciter to test for damping in the feasibility test, or on the piezoelectric actuator for the actual SFES. The conditions of this experiment included various voltage outputs of a power amplifier to the lower vibration exciter, moving distances of the piezoelectric actuator which are displacements of the HTS bulk, and phase differences between the upper and lower vibration exciter or the piezoelectric actuator.The damping feasibility test was conducted with a 300μm gap between the PM and HTS bulk with a PM vibration of 30μm. For the actual SFES test, the gap between the PM and HTS bulk was 1.6mm and the PM vibration was 25μm. The following conditions were conducted to optimize: an appropriate voltage input to the lower vibration exciter or a displacement of piezoelectric actuator and an appropriate phase difference. When the piezoelectric actuator was used, the damping effect was greatly improved up to 92.32% which a displacement of damped PM was 1.92μm.