Thermal Runaway Propagation in a Battery Pack
Application ID: 107571
Due to abuse, such as internal or external short circuits or excessive heating, an individual battery cell may go into thermal runaway, during which the battery cell generates a significant amount of heat. If enough heat is transferred between adjacent cells during a thermal runaway event, neighboring cells will also go into thermal runaway.
A thermal runaway propagating through the whole pack constitutes a severe safety hazard. When designing a battery pack, measures need to be taken in order to mitigate runaway propagation.
This tutorial simulates the heat transfer and resulting thermal runaway propagation in a pack consisting of 24 cylindrical cells using event-based heat sources.
This model example illustrates applications of this type that would nominally be built using the following products:
however, additional products may be required to completely define and model it. Furthermore, this example may also be defined and modeled using components from the following product combinations:
The combination of COMSOL® products required to model your application depends on several factors and may include boundary conditions, material properties, physics interfaces, and part libraries. Particular functionality may be common to several products. To determine the right combination of products for your modeling needs, review the Specification Chart and make use of a free evaluation license. The COMSOL Sales and Support teams are available for answering any questions you may have regarding this.