Build a Better Battery Cell with Simulation-driven Engineering

Introduction

Batteries are becoming increasingly important in our daily lives, from smartphones to electric cars to large-scale power grid storage. As electrification becomes more widespread, batteries with higher capacity, lower cost and weight, longer lifespans, and the ability to meet strict operating conditions and safety standards will be needed. Companies that can meet these requirements will have a significant competitive advantage.

The process of developing an improved battery begins at the cell level. Cells are the fundamental units of batteries, comprising electrodes and electrolytes. A battery pack is formed by connecting multiple cells, often with added structural, thermal and control elements.

Simulation helps engineers to enhance battery cell design and develop new cell technology. In this blog post, we will introduce the Battery Cell Engineering workflows from SIMULIA on the 3DEXPERIENCE® platform and demonstrate how they can be utilized to create high-performance battery systems.

Challenges of Battery Engineering

When developing a battery system, engineers must consider many competing design requirements. The following examples are from electric vehicles, but other industries have similar needs:

• Capacity (driving range): The battery should have the maximum possible capacity to minimize the frequency of recharging and extend the overall lifespan of the device.
• Charge time: The faster the battery charges, the sooner a driver can return to the road.
• Weight: A lighter battery leads to quicker acceleration and improved energy efficiency.
• Longevity: The car battery is a costly component. A longer lifespan reduces maintenance costs and increases resale value.
• Temperature: Charging and discharging produce significant heat inside the battery, requiring it to be cooled in hot weather and warmed in cold weather.
• Safety: The battery must withstand the stresses and vibrations of use and remain safe even in a crash.

To achieve all these design goals and find the best trade-offs, engineers need to understand not only how the cell behaves in the lab but also how it will perform during real operating conditions

Recent advancements in the battery industry have also made development more challenging. Suppliers and manufacturers create a more intricate supply chain as the industry expands. Developing battery cells, manufacturing at scale and integrating them into vehicles or devices can involve numerous players, each operating at different levels of detail, from the molecular to the system. Established cell manufacturers face competition from startups and joint ventures with other industries, such as automotive and energy, are increasingly common. Cell manufacturers are exploring new technologies such as solid-state electrolytes and sodium ion cells.

Why Simulate Battery Cells?

Test on a Virtual Twin Without a Prototype

Simulation enables engineers to meet these challenges. With simulation, engineers can analyze battery performance without a physical prototype using a virtual twin. This digital representation of the battery includes all the relevant data—such as geometry, electrode and electrolyte properties and their interactions—needed to represent its real-world behavior accurately.

Virtual twins need to capture the complex geometry of battery cells, such as layered cylindrical (“jellyroll”) designs. The 3DEXPERIENCE Battery Cell Engineering solutions help design the layered 3D battery cell geometry and convert them into detailed, realistic simulation-ready models. After simulation, every aspect of the cell, such as temperature distribution or ion concentration, can be visualized in 3D.

The virtual twin can be analyzed at any stage of development, from very early in the design phase to before constructing a physical prototype. This allows for comparing different concepts and optimizing design parameters to ensure that the design will meet the requirements before committing to a specific design. The risk of potential failure, costly rework, and project delays are minimal.

Optimize Electrochemistry for Efficient Performance

The performance of a battery in charging, storage and discharging is determined by its electrochemistry. This complex multiphysics, multiphase phenomenon is determined by the 3D structure of the cell and interplay between the electrode and the electrolyte. Analyzing these with testing is time-consuming and measurement limitations inherently constrain the insight provided.

The Battery Cell Engineering solution provides an extended, 3D porous electrode theory (PET) based on the Newman model to simulate the cell’s performance in real-world situations. This models the electrochemistry within the cell, considering both micro-scale and macro-scale details.  The different aspects of physics – structural, thermal, electrochemical  and pore pressure – are considered together. Engineers can analyze factors such as charge/discharge behavior at different charge rates under different mechanical and thermal conditions. As the simulation is in 3D, users can also assess and predict three-dimensional behaviors such as thickness deformation and stress caused by swelling.

Ensure Safety in Real-world Scenarios

Battery cells are designed to store high energy densities in a portable way, such as inside a smartphone or an electric car. As a result, they are exposed to many difficult and dangerous scenarios—extremes of heat and cold, bending, impact and penetration. Battery cells need to withstand these hazards—if they fail, they should fail safely.

Simulation can safely replicate dangerous real-world scenarios within a virtual environment. Events such as nail penetration, car crash or thermal runaway can be studied without the cost and risk of constructing and destroying a physical prototype.

Make Batteries a Better Investment with Longer Lifespan and Reliability

Batteries age over time (calendric aging) and through repeated use (cyclic aging). Calendric aging occurs, for example, when a battery is stored out of use, while cyclic aging takes place each time the battery is charged or discharged. The expense of the battery significantly influences the cost of an electric vehicle and one of the primary causes for the rapid depreciation and increased cost of ownership of electric cars is battery aging. Electric vehicles will become a more attractive investment for drivers and fleet managers if battery cells can last longer.

The Battery Cell Engineering solutions on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform provide comprehensive workflows to simulate these aging processes. It can model various battery aging mechanisms, such as formation & growth of the SEI, lithium plating, and dissolution of the cathode. By analyzing these effects, engineers can optimize the battery’s lifespan and produce more reliable batteries that customers demand.

Explore Battery Science Down to Cell Chemistry Optimization 

Battery Cell Engineering on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform combines SIMULIA multi-physics simulation workflows with key capabilities from BIOVIA for scientific chemical and material engineering and CATIA for design and modeling. Together, these support battery engineers in designing, analyzing, optimizing and validating battery cells using 3D virtual twins.

All process stages take place in the same environment: the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, which provides a single source of truth for all the battery cell engineering data. Designers, analysts and other stakeholders can share information and collaborate reliably and securely. Unified modeling and simulation (MODSIM) helps to left-shift the analysis process so that cell designs can be optimized earlier and potentially identified and resolved, ensuring a more consistent, error-free and accelerated design cycle.

The highly detailed 3D Newman modeling in the Battery Cell Engineering tools on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform is the key to creating realistic simulations of the cell’s thermal and electrochemical behavior. These simulations provide the highest quality predictions about the cell’s performance and age, including any impacts from its use in different conditions. Microstructural simulations enable deep analysis of material characteristics within the electrodes. Meanwhile, mechanical simulation is used to test the cell’s behavior in events such as thermal stresses, mechanical indentation or nail penetration so that engineers can design for optimal safety throughout the cell’s lifespan.

Conclusion

From smartwatches and phones to electric cars and grid storage, battery performance is crucial to the success of devices large and small. This performance is determined at the battery cell level by the electrochemistry and multi-physical interactions within. Developing an efficient, safe and competitive battery requires understanding the cell’s complex three-dimensional behavior.

Dassault Systèmes provides a full Battery Cell Engineering solution on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. This solution integrates the best design and simulation solutions into a workflow. Using these tools, battery designers can analyze battery performance accurately from the comfort of their desks without having to build physical prototypes.

With the Battery Cell Engineering solutions on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, battery cell manufacturers can enable collaboration between all stakeholders and left-shift analysis in the development cycle. Potential safety and efficiency problems can be resolved early without extensive re-designs that cause delays and cost overruns. With simulation, battery cell manufacturers can develop innovative and competitive new products while cutting R&D costs and time-to-market.

For more information, see the on-demand webinars:

https://events.3ds.com/battery-cell-engineering-faster-modsim
https://events.3ds.com/future-aircraft-development-modsim

Interested in the latest in simulation? Looking for advice and best practices? Want to discuss simulation with fellow users and Dassault Systèmes experts? The SIMULIA Community is the place to find the latest resources for SIMULIA software and to collaborate with other users. The key that unlocks the door of innovative thinking and knowledge building, the SIMULIA Community provides you with the tools you need to expand your knowledge, whenever and wherever.