The Concept of Sandwich Panel Structures for Battery Protections in Electric Vehicles Subjected to Ground Impact

Nowadays, with the advances of transportation's technology and the need to fulfill the demands on electric vehicles, the study of the behavior of a battery system subjected to dynamic impact loading is very important to ensure the safety of the system. This is due to the fact that the main power source in electric vehicles, such as Li-ion battery, is so fragile that any small deformation can lead to a thermal event such as fire on the battery system. As an example, a rock that flies and hit the bottom of the vehicle floor can induce a structural damage on the battery which is placed in the floor system. Hence a structural protection system needs to be designed to minimize deformations that affect the performance and operations of the Li-ion batteries. In this research, a study on a lightweight structure concept to protect the Li-ion battery has been carried out. The lightweight protector must be able to reduce any external forces' effect, such as dynamic impact loads. The goal of this research is to design and analyze the battery protection system and to determine the most effective design that can minimize the damage. There are two types of sandwich geometries evaluated in this study, namely Blast Resistant Adaptive Sandwich (BRAS) and Navy Truss (NavTruss) sandwich systems. The structures comprised of aluminum face plates and lightweight core based on BRAS and NavTruss system. The geometries are modeled and simulated by using finite element method in LS-DYNA. The concept of BRAS sandwich structures appeared to be efficient in minimizing the damage on the battery system subjected to dynamic impact loading.