It is no secret that the automotive industry is currently undergoing a massive transformation and many contending technologies are competing for the various automotive use cases.
We at Optumatics are strong believers in the potential for Electric Vehicles of various types (BEV, HEV, etc.) to dominate the passenger car and light-duty transportation market.
We have also recognized the challenges in designing electric vehicles early on and have prepared for these challenges in anticipation of our clients’ demand for high-fidelity analysis.
Thermal runaway is one of the most hazardous safety risks in electric vehicles for both vehicle passengers as well as a vehicle’s surroundings.
The need for numerical modeling of thermal runaway events is mainly due to two reasons:
For these reasons, it is quite useful to have a numerical modeling framework that can provide enough understanding of the physics behind thermal runaway propagation as well as identify the key factors that affect the propagation within a module as well as within a battery pack.
We have used a methodology where computational fluid dynamics and heat transfer are coupled with an electrochemical model to simulate the following phenomena:
Venting gas and solid ejecta from the cells undergoing thermal runaway.
According to battery pack design standards, several following tests should be considered when designing a battery pack. Some of these tests are:
Carrying out all these various testing procedures on real-life prototypes can be impractical. For this reason, building a digital-twin for the battery pack can help design teams optimize their designs and ensure that they pass all the required tests.
The digital-twin can be used to perform the following simulations:
It is quite useful for electric vehicle (BEVs and HEVs) designers to understand the various system-to-system interactions on a vehicle-level. Examples of these are:
For this reason, we recommend performing full vehicle energy management analysis and aging simulations that spans the full battery pack lifetime. This analysis incorporates the following modeling capabilities:
This analysis is available as a dedicated workflow with an accelerated problem setup time on our software EVMATICs.
We at Optumatics also offer CAE support to electric motor designers in solving complex design issues in electric motor design, including:
To accomplish these tasks, we employ multi-physics simulation, which includes: