Electric Vehicle Battery Models Inform Crash Simulation Evaluations To Improve Real-World Safety, Reliability
Across the United States, drivers rely on passenger vehicles to travel over 3.2 trillion miles each year. Vehicle safety during those trips is presumed and crucial to building trust between automobile manufacturers and consumers.
NREL materials science researcher Anthony Donakowski prepares a battery impact testing device for a demonstration. Photo by Werner Slocum, NREL. Where prior industry research focused on the gradual deformation of battery cells, NREL has introduced new capabilities to evaluate dynamic, high-speed impacts. This approach starts with in-lab tension and compression experiments at the component level to characterize mechanical properties. Next, researchers use state-of-the-art equipment coupled with advanced imaging techniques to capture 10,000–40,000 images per second as the cell is damaged.