Ansys, GM, NREL, ESim improve electric vehicle battery models

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – ANSYS, General Motors, the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and ESim are working to design better, safer and longer-lasting lithium-ion electricvehicles batteries.

Over the last two and half years, the team has worked on a DOE-funded project, Computer-Aided Engineering for Electric Drive Vehicle Batteries (CAEBAT), to combine new and existing battery models into engineering simulation software to shorten design cycles and optimize batteries for increased performance, safety and lifespan.

The team is modeling thermal management, electrochemistry, ion transport, and fluid flow. As a result of the work, a battery model is now standard in ANSYS Fluent, a computational fluid dynamics solution. This Fluent capability helps battery developers save time in the design-build-test-break process for prototyping and manufacturing.

"The emphasis in the software integration has been to provide a flexible array of modeling choices that can support several categories of battery researchers, cell manufacturers, pack integrators, and vehicle manufacturers that deliver fast and accurate results," says Jan Aase, director of vehicle systems research lab at General Motors. "With a concise plan for rapid deployment to the industry, the software solutions created through this project are already helping designers and engineers at GM to accelerate the pace of battery innovation and development for future electric-drive vehicles."

By drawing on a unique approach pioneered at NREL, collaborators integrated physical battery scales (electrodes, cell, pack, and full vehicle) and multiple physical phenomena (electrochemical, thermal, fluid, and structural) – factors that have been a key barrier for effective simulation. In addition, the team blended established detailed 3-D field simulation technologies with systems-level simulation.

"ANSYS is well known for providing reliable simulation technology to enable sustainable design across a wide range of industries, including automotive," says Sandeep Sovani, director of global automotive industry at ANSYS. "The CAEBAT project has been a great opportunity for ANSYS. We are partnering with other recognized leaders in EV battery technology to develop and deliver powerful modeling tools that can be used by all battery manufacturers to accelerate production of safe, reliable, high-performance and long-lasting EV batteries that make vehicles more fuel-efficient and sustainable."

Throughout the remainder of 2014, the team will refine automation techniques for battery cell and pack-level simulations and continue to validate the models with experiments. Collaborators plan to implement cycle-life and abuse (such as overheating) models. NREL's multi-particle model, with ability to model mixture of active materials with different particle sized, will be incorporated as well.

Source: ANSYS Inc.