Smarter, Safer, More Efficient Car Batteries
University of Michigan engineers are collaborating with the automotive industry to reduce the environmental impacts of vehicles. They have developed advanced temperature sensors and simulation models that allow them to observe how car batteries function in real world scenarios, like New York traffic. These observations validate actions that can be taken to prolong the life of the battery.
Transcript
00:00:00 A hundred years ago we started putting batteries on cars but the basic structure of the battery hasn't really changed much in 30 years. We're trying to add some intelligence through control of how you use that battery you try and come up with physics-based model also understanding the material properties where the heat being generated and then how that he is being taken out of battery. We have the ability to connect these batteries to an electric load or a power supply which can simulate vehicle drive cycles so we can actually hook up single cells and and small
00:00:33 three or five cell modules to our electric cycler next door and we can say okay we want to simulate this vehicle going through a new york city drive cycle. This gives us a way to actually both calibrate the models are developing and validate them in fairly real-world conditions.So these cells here are power cells out of a hybrid electric vehicle. Part of the project we're working on in collaboration with Ford and General Electric is to develop some advance sensors to put in these battery packs. So this is a three-year project to develop very
00:01:07 thin film temperature and strain sensors that can actually be put into a battery pack at different locations to monitor at what rate all the cells are degrading and understand actions we can take to prolong life of the pack. So we've got a couple of these temperature sensors here they're actually measuring the battery temperature so when the when the battery here is actually placed in this bus bar you can see here the battery temperature is actually measured just great here on the top. This is the temperature sensor and its just in contact
00:01:38 with one point on the top of the battery. So this single measurement location can only give you so much information about the battery and in fact we're not even measuring every battery temperature because these sensors cost a dollar apiece to put inside the battery that directly correlates to the cost of the final vehicle. Manufactures come back to us and say, you know, we only when he is 5 sensors. Do we have an argument for why they should add that six sensor based on what the temperature distribution looks like over you know the use a battery. Our project and goal for this is to actually
00:02:13 take this battery pack re-instrument some other cells in the battery pack put it back together and actually put in a vehicle try out some the algorithms the we're developing. We can come up with some models that really tell us these are the key parameters in the system that we really need to be able to monitor and control in order to increase reliability and that's something that can enhance I think the life of this battery in a vehicle application. Related Video: So what we have achieved here is colored solar cells you know the red stripes the blue background they are actually working solar cells.
00:02:49 You want this material semiconductor material to absorb of the light...