Abstraction and simulation of EV battery systems—resilience engineering by biological transformation

Abstract

While the demand for electric vehicles (EV) is continuously growing, safety issues still remain, specifically related to fire hazards. This research aims to improve the resilience of battery systems in electric vehicles by transfering concepts found in biology to a bioinspired battery system. Due to the complexity of modern battery systems, the biological concepts cannot be applied directly. A simplified simulation battery system for electric vehicles is modelled, which contains the essential battery components necessary to understand both, software and battery dynamics. This is used as a baseline model to study the effects of typical heat-related disturbances. Subsequently, this simulation model is modified to demonstrate the transfer of biological concepts underlying specifically the hypersensitization and vasospasm mechanisms related to wound healing, and to test the effects of disturbances and alterations comparable to damages caused by vehicle accidents. As a battery system’s mass and volume should not be increased by additonal hardware, the biological concepts target the interaction within, and the composition of, the system, while leaving single components relatively unchanged. It is found that small bioinspired alterations to the battery system can have significant impacts on their vulnerability to common hazards.