An accumulator in hydraulic systems stores kinetic energy during braking action and then that controls hasty surge pressure. An energy recovery system using accumulator seems to be advantageous far ERBS due to its high energy density. This study suggests a method to decide suitable accumulator volume far ERBS. The method is based upon energy conservation between kinetic energy of moving inertia and elastic energy of accumulator. The energy conversion was analyzed and a simple formula was derived. A series of computer simulation was done to verify effectiveness of the formu1a. The results of the simulation work were compared with those of experiments and these results show that the proposed design is effective far decision of accumulator volume in ERBS.