Calculation of constant power lithium battery discharge curves

Abstract

Standard battery testing procedure consists of discharging the battery at constant current. However, for battery powered aircraft application, consideration of the cruise portion of the flight envelope suggests that power should be kept constant, implying that battery characterization should occur over a constant power discharge. Consequently, to take advantage of existing battery discharge curves it would be useful to have a methodology that can extract a constant power discharge curve from a constant current discharge curve. The development of such a methodology for lithium batteries is described in this article.