Fault current measurements during crush testing of electrically parallel lithium-ion battery modules

Abstract

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 License (CC BY-NC-ND, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is not changed in any way and is properly cited. For permission for commercial reuse, please email: oaelectrochem.org. Experimental data is presented from crush testing of 1S4P battery modules that quantifies the fault currents experienced by each cell after the onset of an internal short circuit. Combined with voltage and temperature measurements, the newly proposed method for measuring fault currents provides a more complete picture of the module failure during abusive crush. Short circuit resistance trends versus time are calculated from the current measurements, indicating approximately 20 milliohms resistance values prior to thermal runaway and resistive heat generation on the order of hundreds of watts.