The quest to improve the fuel economy of General Motors passenger cars has led to the investigation of an engine-flywheel hybrid powertrain at the GM Research Laboratories (GMR). An engine-flywheel system was designed for a compact car and its performance was predicted analytically. The sytem was estimated to achieve an improvement in EPA composite fuel economy of 13 per cent ooer a 1984 production compact car. This margin of improvement was judged insuficient to justify the complex drivetrain, and, therefore, a prototype system was not built. However, the current potential of engine-flywheel hybrids for GM passenger car applications has been defined, and the technology areas requiring additional research attention have been identified.

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Laboratory tests run under skid-prone conditions have shown that cage skid in a lightly loaded roller bearing, operating at speeds up to 3 million DN, can be reduced by using a high traction fluid as the bearing lubricant. With a Mil-L-23699 oil, maximum cage slip approached 65 percent. When the military specification oil was replaced by a fluid blended to develop a high coefficient of traction, the maximum cage slip, in the same bearing, was reduced to approximately 3 percent. The high traction oil did not comply with the Mil Specification; however, the dramatic reduction in skidding demonstrated the desirability of increasing the traction coefficients for fluids used to lubricate aircraft jet engine mainshaft bearings.

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