Design of a testing device for quasi-confined compression of lithium-ion battery cells

Abstract

The Impact and Crashworthiness Laboratory at MIT has formed a battery consortium to promote research concerning the crash characteristics of new lithium-ion battery technologies as used in automotive applications. Within a broad range of tests, there was a need to perform compression tests with a variable amount of confinement. A spring-loaded detainment device was designed which allows the battery to be confined in the axis perpendicular to compression without completely rigid walls. This provides a testing environment far more similar to the conditions of a real world crash situation. During an automobile crash event, the battery pack acts as a unit where each individual cell may experience a range of stresses from nearby cells or pack walls. An appropriate device was designed in Solidworks and used in the MIT ICL for testing with adjustable confinement during compression testing. MIT's research as a part of the consortium will continue for 3 more years beyond these initial tests. Never the less, the coming computational and constitutive models will be built using initial individual cell testing. Any model of a complete battery pack will use the material properties derived from cell testing.