Modeling and Simulation of Electric Vehicle Batteries 

Investigators:  C.Y. Wang, Wen-Bin Gu, Xiaoou Chen, and Shimei Li
Sponsor:  U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

Understanding the electrochemical and physical processes occurring inside battery cells is a key to(1) predicting the charge and discharge performance of EV batteries; (2) identifying various mechanisms limiting battery performance; and (3) developing optimal charge algorithms.This research project investigates the complicated chemical and physical phenomena that govern the battery performance, such as electrochemical kinetics, mass transport in porous electrodes and free electrolyte, fluid flow and thermal effects. A comprehensive model is being developed to incorporate all these phenomena, and the resulting model equations are solved using CFD (computational fluid dynamics) techniques. Simulation results will provide the detailed information of concentration and current distributions, and charge and discharge curves. These results would yield significant insight into responses of battery to various charge and discharge modes, and thus help to design optimal charge algorithms. In addition, the developed numerical simulator for battery performance can be readily integrated into the vehicle simulation.