Coupled Multiphysics Modeling of Lithium-ion Batteries for Automotive Crashworthiness Applications

Considerable advances have been made on battery safety models, but achieving predictive accuracy across a wide range of conditions continues to be challenging. Interactions between dynamically evolving mechanical, electrical and thermal state variables make model prediction difficult during mechanical abuse scenarios. In this study, we develop a physics-based modeling approach which allows for choosing between different mechanical and electrochemical models depending on the required level of analysis. We demonstrate the use of this approach to connect cell-level abuse response to electrode-level and particle-level transport phenomenon. A pseudo-two-dimensional model and a simplified single-particle models are calibrated to electrical-thermal cycling data and applied to mechanically induced short circuit scenario to understand how the choice of electrochemical model affects the model prediction under abuse scenarios. These models are implemented using user defined subroutines on LS-DYNA finite element software and can be coupled with existing automotive crash safety models.