Project Details

[Return to Previous Page]

Indenter for pouch cell battery safety testing

Company: Mechatronics Research Lab

Major(s):
Primary: ME
Secondary: ESC
Optional: ED

Non-Disclosure Agreement: NO

Intellectual Property: NO

Electric vehicle accidents could lead to mechanical deformation on batteries and catastrophic events such as fires. Thus, testing Li-ion batteries with physical damage is critical in order to characterize safety limits. This capstone design project is to develop a battery indenter to study the effect of physical abuse on Li-ion pouch cells. The primary objective is to build an indenter that can create indentations of desired depth ranging from 100 µm to a few mm. The indenter should have an accuracy of the order of 10 µm at a specified location. However, the design should ensure that the indenter makes an indentation only on one side and that the other side remains flat for accurate pressure and temperature measurements. A Strong enough handwheel needs to be included to make sure that we can turn it by hand. A deep throat (>8 cm) indenter design will ensure indentations long enough to reach the middle of large pouch cells. Interchangeable 3D-printed indenter tips for different indentation sizes and shapes should be included. The purpose of the indenter is to create dents of desired depths at the desired location in Li-ion pouch cells. These cells can be further tested by cycling and shelf tests. The voltage, current, temperature, and pressure responses can be used to characterize the battery health and performance metrics. The effect of indentation location and depth could be studied using this approach. As indentation could cause a short circuit, the effect of different severity of short circuits could be studied using the indenter setup. For safety reasons, the capstone design students will be provided with discharged pouch cells for testing purposes. The variation of thermal and pressure gradient with fault severity can be studied and characterized to detect defective battery cells, typically at end-of-line testing.