Evaluation of the mechanical shock testing standards for electric vehicle batteries

The safety of Li-ion batteries (LIB) has become an important issue with the continuously increased use of electric vehicles (EV) in the world. In a survivable vehicle crash, when the vehicle needs to maintain structural integrity, crash-induced shock may damage EV's LIB. Therefore, an evaluation of commonly used mechanical shock test standards for EV battery module and pack is performed in this study against the crash-induced shock signals collected from National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) tests. Various shock analysis methods including signal characteristics in time domain, power spectral density (PSD) and shock response spectrum (SRS) in frequency domain, and the acceleration/velocity-change diagram are used for the evaluation. It is found that most peak accelerations of NCAP shock signals significantly exceed the peak accelerations specified in shock testing standards. Crash-induced shocks cannot be fully represented by the half-sine pulse adopted in shock testing standards. In both time and frequency domains, the existing shock testing standards generally underestimate the severities of the crash-induced shocks, and therefore, are non-conservative. It also shows that the correct selection of a filter for the processing of the original crash-induced shock signal is crucial for the specification of EV battery shock environment and shock response analyses. The results obtained in this research can support the development of more reliable shock testing standards for EV batteries.