Quenching thermal runaway propagation in lithium-ion battery arrays with various thermal barriers: Experimental and modeling characterization

Incorporation of thermal barriers (TBs) into lithium-ion battery modules has been shown to quench thermal runaway propagation (TRP). The design of such modules is required to optimize TBs to minimize weight and volume while maintaining TRP suppression. To construct an efficient design framework for evaluating diverse TBs, a modular, reconfigurable experimental system was developed to generate datasets for model calibration and validation, and a computational modeling environment was tailored to the physics of the specific cell and TB configurations being explored. The experimental system was constructed and exercised, permitting changes to the number of insulation layers, inclusion of finned surfaces, and the number of cells under test. In parallel, thermophysical-property calibration tests for TBs were conducted. Together, they produced extensive datasets for model calibration and validation. A fast yet sufficiently accurate low-order model was developed to predict TRP quenching in 11-Ah lithium-cobalt-oxide pouch cells at 100 % state of charge, across TB and no-TB configurations. Because the model contained more than ten unknown parameters (e.g., thermal contact resistances), a sequential, multi-step calibration framework was developed to estimate them and improve model accuracy. The calibrated model was validated against independent datasets. The design framework was then applied to assess the TRP-quenching performance of prospective designs based on an analysis of TB mechanisms (thermal storage, dissipation, and transmission). A quenching boundary map was generated, indicating that a TB comprising 2.5 mm aerogel layer and 1 mm fin quenched TRP and reduced mass and volume by 83 % and 72 %, respectively, relative to the baseline experimental TB.