Study on Accurate Modeling and Efficient Simulation of Thermal Runaway Propagation of Battery Modules

The simulation of thermal runaway propagation in battery systems is an important step in the development process of battery systems, the results of which can provide guidance and suggestions for the optimization of battery system safety design. Therefore, it is necessary to simplify the thermal runaway propagation model reasonably in order to significantly improve research and development efficiency while meeting the accuracy of the system model. Based on the traditional thermal runaway test and numerical simulation results of the cell, by adopting the research approach of "cell - module”, a simplified thermal runaway propagation model for battery modules with the normalized heat generation equation as the core is constructed in this paper to study the accuracy and computational efficiency of the model. The results show that the computational time of the simplified thermal runaway propagation model for battery modules is 37 minutes, while the computational time of the traditional module model is about 90 minutes under the same conditions. With the accuracy of the models reaching 90%, the computational time is shortened by about 2/3, significantly reducing the computational cost. The research in this paper provides technical reference for efficient and fast simulation of thermal propagation at the battery pack level. © 2024 SAE-China. All rights reserved.