Battery Abuse Analysis using LS-DYNA

As Lithium-ion batteries see increasing use in a variety of applications, anticipation of the response to abuse conditions becomes an important factor in designing optimized systems. Abuse scenarios with potential relevance to the automotive industry include crash-induced crush leading to an internal short circuit, external short circuit, or thermal ramp, and overcharge conditions. Simulating each of these abuse scenarios requires sophisticated modeling tools that span multiple physical and electrochemical phenomena, as well as handle complex geometries that accurately represent battery cells, modules, and packs. The three-dimensional, transient analysis capabilities of LS-DYNA can be leveraged to simulate the battery response with a high degree of spatial resolution, which is widely considered a prerequisite for predicting the highly localized phenomena involved in the onset of thermal runaway. The electrical, electrochemical and thermal response of the new LS-DYNA battery model can be coupled to the mechanical solver using a variety of approaches, ranging from one-way coupling based on a time-scale analysis to tight two-way coupling. The model will be presented and several battery abuse case studies will be examined to verify the capability of the modeling tools. The impact of hardware size will be investigated, as the thermal behavior and corresponding severity of the abuse response changes depending on the number of cells and their configuration within a module. Experimental data will be used to estimate parameters, confirm the model capability, and identify areas of future work to improve the fidelity and ease of implementation of the simulation tool. Multiple hardware types will be compared to demonstrate the relationship between cell performance and module abuse response.