Multi-Physics Model of Lithium-Ion Battery and Battery Pack Undergoing Abuse Conditions

Lithium-ion batteries (LIB) have found a wide range of applications in the last 25 years including consumer products, electric vehicles, grid storage, and the military. The United States Navy and Marine Corps have various applications requiring LIB, and safety is one of the primary considerations for shipboard carriage or integration. One of the most important safety considerations for LIB is their behavior under various abuses such as incipient failure due to manufacturing imperfections, exposure to heat, external short circuit, and mechanical abuse. Several exothermic reactions can occur as the inner cell temperature increases, and if the heat generation is larger than the dissipated heat to the surroundings, this leads to heat accumulation in the cell and acceleration of the chemical reactions, which can then lead to a thermal runaway. Therefore, much effort has been focused on understanding the progression of thermal runaway in LIB under abuse conditions, and how to model and predict behavior. Based upon previous work that has successfully developed multi-scale models (i.e., electrochemical and thermal-mechanical models) for modeling the thermal runaway inside large-format LIB, this study focuses on how to model the temperature distributions within packs of cells based on various battery-pack design constraints. In the current study, a multi-physics model of LIB is developed using COMSOL Multiphysics simulation software and the model is also validated using experimental cell data collected at Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division (NSWCCD). The temperature distribution within a simplified LIB cell pack is also developed to assess various battery-pack design constraints and