Battery Design and Manufacturing Solution

Optimise Batteries Design with Electrochemical and Mechanical Simulations

The materials and manufacturing processes involved in battery fabrication play a pivotal role in determining their performance, safety, and lifespan. From electrode composition to microstructure optimisation, every component and process step influences the battery's overall efficiency. Understanding and fine-tuning these factors are essential for advancing battery technology and meeting the growing demand for high-performance energy storage solutions.

Digimat offers a groundbreaking platform for simulating both the electrochemical and mechanical performance of batteries. By accounting for the diverse material properties of battery components and the intricacies of the manufacturing process, engineers can now design optimised solutions with unmatched precision. The tool’s ability to virtually assess and enhance battery performance ensures faster development cycles and reduced costs, empowering manufacturers to innovate with confidence.

Thanks to the partnership with Fraunhofer ITWM, the integration of the "Battery and Electrochemistry Simulation Tool" (BEST) within Digimat adds immense value to electrochemical simulations. BEST enables precise modelling of critical phenomena like ion transport, conductivity, and overpotential contributions. Engineers can use these insights to optimise battery designs, achieving significant performance improvements while minimizing costly trial-and-error experimentation.

Hexagon solutions

• Digimat-FE: Digitalise materials to accelerate their development based on a deeper understanding
• HxGN Digital Materials: Unlocking the power of materials

Optimizing Battery Performance & Safety: Thermal Management

Battery thermal management is crucial for optimal electric vehicle performance and safety. Operating within the ideal temperature range of 20-30 °C ensures efficiency, power, and prevents degradation. High temperatures risk battery life and safety, causing thermal runaway and potential explosions. To design an effective thermal management system, engineers need multiphysics simulation tools like CFD and 1-D system modeling. These tools enable rapid evaluation of design options, operational scenarios, and confidence in the system's performance. Simulations are cost-effective, eliminating bad designs early and reducing reliance on physical prototypes. High-fidelity CFD methods along with widely accepted electrochemical battery models such as P2D (Doyle, Fuller, and Newman) model or numerically efficient equivalent circuit model ensure accurate heat generation, thermal propagation and cooling system evaluation. Connectivity with FMI (Functional Mockup Interface) opens the door to incorporate even more accurate battery model provided from 3rd parties with FMU (Functional Mockup Unit). Simulations allow for system-level optimization, considering constraints like weight, without requiring specialized facilities or battery prototype destruction.

Hexagon solutions

• Cradle CFD: Thermo-fluid simulations with integrated cell electrochemistry
• Elements: 1D system modeling; coupling with 3D CFD via FMI/FMU
• CoSim: Multiphysics co-simulations
• MSC Nastran: general-purpose solution for structural thermal management

Battery safety

Battery safety is a key factor that must be evaluated as early as possible in the design process of a new battery module/pack. In this phase, simulation becomes a very powerful tool because it allows us to quickly investigate how the designers can better deal with severe phenomena such as thermal runaway. Thermal runaway is characterized by the transition of a battery cell into a self-heating state which can lead to a thermal chain reaction that quickly propagates to adjacent cells and eventually to the entire battery module/pack, becoming potentially a life-threatening risk for passengers. Instead of running expensive and dangerous physical tests, propagation of thermal runaway can be efficiently simulated with CFD analysis considering the actual battery cell physical properties by using Accelerating Rate Calorimetry (ARC) test data. These allow to accurately and efficiently characterize the heat generation within a cell during the self-heating state of a thermal runaway. Once cells properties have been set, a simulation of the entire battery module/pack can be carried out for various designs of battery module/pack and various scenarios of thermal runaway event, analyzing the extensions and temperature reached in the impacted area and help designing countermeasures to reduce the risk of propagation and mitigate the damages to the vehicle and its occupants.

Hexagon solutions

Battery Durability & Safety: Simulation for excellence

Batteries are not only the source of power of the vehicle, but they are also the most expensive component. Furthermore, regulations around the globe require car manufacturers to protect the batteries with warranties that can go up to 10 years. These factors set battery durability under huge pressure as recall campaigns can be extremely expensive and may lead to loss of trust from potential customers for the entire vehicle range of the OEM, not only for the involved models. It is then of paramount importance to early discover potential design flaws by extensive use of simulations techniques. These techniques allow, well in advance of the availability of any real prototype, to expose batteries to the most severe vibrations and temperature levels; hotspots and weak connections can be immediately identified, and countermeasures taken before any real issue arises.

Early design explorations also allow guaranteeing safety of this critical component both in terms of mechanical abuse, e.g., impact from underneath, and thermal, e.g., optimizing the number and locations of the venting caps.

Hexagon solutions

• Democratizing fatigue analysis for the masses

Integrated Design: Enhancing Performance & Efficiency

Batteries power complex systems like electric vehicles where system performance is dependent on multiple sub-systems and how they interact with each other. Systems level integration is key to making the right choices in early design to accelerate your development cycle. In Elements you can integrate batteries, electrical, controls, thermal, mechanics, hydraulics, and many more physical domains in a single model. These models can run entire drive cycles in seconds, enabling you to run multiple scenarios to find the right set of parameters to match your requirements. Once the components designs are fleshed out, you can integrate FMUs from Adams and Cradle CFD  into Elements to validate your designs. Elements has your system integration needs covered on both ends of the development cycle.

Hexagon solutions

• Multiphysics system integration and simulation

Battery manufacturing

Battery manufacturing processes consists of multiple stages from the individual cell up to an entire battery module. Each component and sub-assembly must be designed to perform as part of the complex system. The effects of multiple complex manufacturing steps can play a significant role in the quality, reliability, and performance of the system.

Manufacturing process simulation plays a crucial role in optimizing component geometries and manufacturing process to improve quality and efficiency as well as predicting and reducing defects, managing thermal challenges, and minimizing costs. By modeling processes such as metal forming, joining, foil welding, can welding, conductor welding, or module enclosure assembly, manufacturers can enhance quality, streamline production, and facilitate scaling and automation, ultimately reducing waste and accelerating the delivery of reliable, high-performance batteries.

Hexagon solutions

• Solutions for simulating manufacturing processes
• General-purpose solution for manufacturing applications

Battery Inspection and Development

One of the most expensive and safety-critical components in cars and other electrified vehicles (EV) is the battery. It has the highest influence on the vehicle range, and poor quality may lead to rapid degradation. Currently, lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are the most common on the market. Their integrity must be guaranteed with maximum reliability using the latest battery inspection technologies. Consumer electronics require batteries with even higher energy densities. Incidents in the recent past have shown that the safety of these devices must be guaranteed, as well.

Besides the production of established designs, batteries are also a hot topic in research. Challenges in R&D span from battery design to microstructure characterization of the components. Scientists aim to optimize anode and cathode material of LIBs, as well as explore new concepts like solid-state batteries—where a fixed internal design has not yet been established.

Hexagon solutions

• Battery Anode Overhang Analysis with Volume Graphics

Computed tomography scan of a 18650 Li-Ion battery cell virtually cut open with analysis of the anode overhang region