According to the engineers working on the project, plastic battery enclosures have many advantages over metal alternatives. For instance, they are lighter, more sustainable and cheaper to produce, and have better electrical insulation.

However, in the event of a damaged cell, the battery housing can be exposed to enormous thermal loads if thermal runaway of individual cells occurs due to the damage and, in the worst case scenario, this reaction spreads to adjoining cells (thermal propagation). To ensure safety, a battery housing must contain the spread of the resulting hot gases and particles. One challenge, however, is proving its safety, which is complex and expensive.

That’s where the SiKuBa project comes in. The formation and propagation of hot gas and particle flows, and their interaction with structural elements, will be analyzed experimentally and transferred to simulation models. The goal is to incrase cost- and time-efficiency in the development phase.

Engineers working on the initiative will be studying the fundamental effects of thermomechanical material behavior and cell degassing under a variety of different load case scenarios, materials and component designs. They will also integrate the results into simulation models and conduct physical tests on a demonstrator housing.