Abstract

It is expected that over the next 10 years the number of new xEV models will be increasing significantly and with that the need to design more efficient vehicle systems with higher ranged vehicle with low cost. With increasingly stringent regulations on emissions, safety regulation and the need to design complex interdependent systems such as e-machines, battery packs, power electronics, radiators, engine surface, and exhaust system. It has become critical to model the drive-train in its entirety especially the thermal management system (TMS) . In this paper we would like to address how battery safety simulation would assist in minimizing the research, analysis, and experiments to analyze the complete behavior of vehicle systems to include where there is a need for strongly coupled resolution of flow, heat transfer, electrochemistry, and combustion during operation to provide the best possible prediction to maintain the integrity. The safety concern for electrical vehicles and other application of lithium-ion batteries is one of the main obstacle that hinders the large-scale adoption of them. Lithium-ion batteries are constantly improving in their energy density, form factor and due to that enhancing their safety is becoming increasingly urgent for the electric vehicle development. Batteries can undergo different multiphysics based abuses which can be by varied from electrical, mechanical and/or thermal abuse but all of these abuse result in thermal runaway (TR). Thermal runaway propagation and mitigation is a key problem which would like to address in this paper. Multiple approaches for thermal runaway are evaluated to limit temperature rise, provide thermal isolation and cost reduction for mitigation. This paper reviews the following approach based on the availability of data, computational time and accuracy – utilizing Accelerated Rate Calorimetry (ARC) test data providing low degree of accuracy but computational efficient, gases which are eliminating during TR act as a fuel which reactive and combustible leading to additional heat generation providing higher degree of accuracy and finally progressing from previous approach is have a multiphase (solid-liquid-gas) fuel which is combustible and providing the highest degree of accuracy. Physically developing and performing trials on new battery compositions and cooling strategies is an expensive and resource intensive process that only large funded organization and laboratories have the facilities to perform successfully. In this paper we would cover the various simulation approaches for thermal runaway via a case study essentially reduces the development time and cost.