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Journal of Power Sources: Xiaowei Zhang, Tomasz Wierzbicki
Journal of Power Sources: Xiaowei Zhang, Tomasz Wierzbicki
h i g h l i g h t s
A comprehensive set of mechanical tests on shell casing of 18650 cells was performed.
Plastic and fracture models of shell casing were provided along with calibration procedure.
Jellyroll was described by means of a crushable foam model.
The presence of shell casing significantly improves the cell's resistance to mechanical abuse loading.
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: Most of the literature on lithium-ion battery cells is concerned with modeling of jellyroll with little
Received 23 December 2014 attention to properties of shell casing. However, shell casing provides substantial strength and fracture
Received in revised form resistance under mechanical loading and therefore must be an important part of modeling of lithium-ion
6 January 2015
batteries. The paper reports on a comprehensive test program on commercially available empty shell
Accepted 13 January 2015
Available online 14 January 2015
casing of 18650 lithium-ion cylindrical cells. Part of the tests was used to determine plastic and fracture
properties from sub-size specimens cut from lateral part of the cans. The other part served to validate
plasticity and fracture models under various loading conditions. The associated flow rule was used to
Keywords:
Mechanical loading
simulate plasticity behavior and Modified Mohr-Coulomb (MMC) fracture model was adopted to predict
Lithium-ion cells crack initiation and propagation of shell casing. Simulation results confirmed that present plasticity and
Battery shell casing fracture models could predict global plastic behavior of the cells under different loading conditions. The
Plasticity jellyroll model with volumetric hardening was introduced to compare the performance of empty shell
Fracture casing, bare jellyroll and complete battery cell. It was shown that in many loading situations, for example,
three point bending of the cylindrical cells, the metallic shell casing provides most of mechanical
resistance.
© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpowsour.2015.01.077
0378-7753/© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
48 X. Zhang, T. Wierzbicki / Journal of Power Sources 280 (2015) 47e56
[5,6]. Sahraei et al. [7] described a dynamic test on large format 2. Plasticity modeling for the battery shell casing
cylindrical cell subjected to axial compression. The cell exploded,
tearing the shell casing into small pieces. Recently, Xia et al. [8] 2.1. Material
performed numerical simulation of the 18650 cell under symmet-
ric and eccentric load by a sharp punch, parallel to the longitudinal The cylindrical cells are widely used as batteries for laptop and
direction. The symmetrically loaded shell casing ruptured under portable power. Such cells are also powering the Tesla Model S. The
6 mm indentation depth. Fracture of eccentrically loaded cell shell casing is made by deep drawing, which can reduce the cost
occurred much earlier, when the punch travelled only 1.6 mm. compared with the extruding one with welded endcap. The present
Considering the existing evidence and potential hazard associated paper is studying the properties of the commercially available
with spreading gases, spill of the electrolyte and possible fire from deep-drawn shell casing of the 18650 cell made from low carbon
the bursting cell to the neighboring ones, a proper attention should steel, which is approximately 18 mm in diameter and 65 mm in
be given to this problem by the battery safety community. length.
The objective of the present paper is to determine the contri- Generally, a typical deep drawing process consists of several
bution of the strength of the shell casing to the overall response of steps from a flat circular sheet to the final shape. The deep drawing
the cells to the mechanical loading. To this end, plastic and fracture process results in considerable accumulated plastic strain, leading
properties of the shell casing material were determined by using to the deformation induced anisotropic of the casing that can be
the most modern technology developed in the Impact and Crash- determined experimentally. Therefore, due to the anisotropic
worthiness Lab of MIT [9e16]. This effort consisted of an extensive properties of the virgin rolled sheet and deformation induced
experimental program, model calibration and component valida- anisotropy, the thickness of the shell casing varies along both axial
tion. Almost 100 empty shell casings were tested to complete the direction and hoop direction of the casing, as shown in Fig. 1. The
stated task. Specimens were cut from the actual shell casing, which area with maximum thickness is around the open end of the can
restricted their size and shape to a certain degree. The shell casing and minimum thickness is approximately in the middle. Such a
material had undergone relatively large strain during the deep distribution of thickness was also reported in the literature for deep
drawing process. These strains were distributed non-uniformly drawn shell casing [17]. The average wall thickness is 0.26 mm. The
along the length of the cell. The anisotropic properties arising chemical composition is summarized in Table 1. All specimens were
first from the rolling process of the sheets and then deep drawing extracted from the same package of the battery cell (100 pieces)
process are substantial and were to be taken in to account. There is and can be assumed to have the same mechanical properties.
a considerable variation in thickness of the can from 0.253 mm to
0.29 mm at the ends. The endcap on the other hand was not sub- 2.2. Preparation of the specimens and description of the test
jected to any strain histories and represents the virgin material. method
However, the size of the endcap is too small to cut any specimens.
All the above features made the testing and calibration procedure In this section, a rather detailed procedure on the preparation
much more difficult as compared to previous work in the lab on and test method is given so that similar test could be performed
thin automotive sheets. From this point of view, the present paper around other labs in the world. Two methods were used to prepare
is indeed innovative in terms of both test procedures and numerical tensile specimens for plasticity calibration. In both methods, the
simulations. endcap was removed. In the first method, the shell casing was cut
In the last section of the paper, numerical simulations were lengthwise and flattened, as shown in Fig. 2. Dogbone-shaped
performed on bare jellyroll, empty shell casing and complete cells. specimens were cut from three different flattened-sheet orienta-
It was conclusively proven that in some loading situation, such as tions (axial or deep drawing direction, hoop direction and diagonal
three point bending, the shell casing provided most of the me- direction) using a milling machine. The specimen geometry
chanical resistance of the cell. Distinguished feature of the present (Fig. 3a) is different from that in ASTM-E8M standard (sheet type),
paper is that not only it provides new information about the due to the limited length and diameter of the shell casing. Since the
important modeling problem, but also shows in some details how dimension of the flattened sheet of the shell casing is 65 mm in
the information was obtained. length and 56 mm in width (hoop direction), the geometry of
Table 1
Chemical composition of the shell casing.
Element Mn P Ni Cr Cu Mo V Ti Co
Percentage 0.16 0.008 1.36 0.056 0.012 0.002 0.003 0.003 0.006
Fig. 2. Specimen preparation from the flattened shell casing in different material orientations (0 , 45 and 90 to the deep drawing direction).
Fig. 3. a) Geometry of the dogbone specimen (Dimension in mm); b) specimens before test.
dogbone along hoop direction is 10 mm shorter than in axial and displacement (Vic 2D, version 2009). All the specimens were tested
diagonal direction. Fig. 3b shows the specimens after cutting. on a table-top uniaxial loading machine (Instron Model 5940 with
Relatively large spring back was observed for specimens along di- load capability 2 kN) with speed of 0.2 mm min-1.
agonal and hoop direction. Fig. 5 shows the engineering stressestrain curves in three di-
The flattening process may bring a certain amount of pre- rections from 6 tests of flattened shell casing (2 in each direction).
damage to the final specimens. To study the flattening effect, an The displacement for calculating engineering strain was measured
alternative uniaxial tensile test was conducted. Window-shaped from positions closed to the end of the gauge section (gauge length
specimens were cut directly from the shell casing without flat- was 8 mm for specimens along hoop direction and 18 mm for the
tening process, as shown in Fig. 4 (left). The geometry of the gauge other two). The cross section was assumed as 0.26 mm when
section of the specimen is approximately the same as the above calculating the engineering stress. The repeatability of the test is
dogbone specimen. Fig. 4 (right) shows the setup of the uniaxial relatively good, even though the thickness of the flattened sheet
tensile test of the window-shaped specimen. To calculate the en- varies from specimen to specimen and even varies from region to
gineering stressestrain curve of the specimen, exact area of the region within specimen. The nominal Young's modulus is 160 GPa
initial gauge section was obtained from geometric model. Digital (due to non-uniform thickness) and the average flow stress is
Image Correlation (DIC) was used to measure the local strain and 500 MPa. The comparison of window-shaped specimen and dog-
bone specimen is shown in Fig. 6. The results show that there was
only a slight hardening effect due to the flattening process for this
material.
Fig. 5. Engineering stressestrain curves (left) and fractured dogbone specimens (right).
Fig. 6. Comparison of stressestrain curves of uniaxial tension (left) and fractured window-shape specimen (right).
The yield surface of the shell casing material is also crucial since Table 2
the material of shell casing has considerable anisotropy. Hill'48 Combined Swift and Voce hardening law parameters.
8 " 2sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi 39 1
pffiffiffi # =n
<A 3 qp 1 þ c21 qp 1 qp
b
ε f h; q ¼ c þ pffiffiffi ð1 c3 Þ sec 1 4 cos þ c1 h þ sin 5 (3)
:c2 3 2 3 6 3 6 3 6 ;
X. Zhang, T. Wierzbicki / Journal of Power Sources 280 (2015) 47e56 51
tests with different combinations of stress triaxiality h and Fig. 7aed were cut from flattened sheets of shell casing and the
normalized Lode angle q. shear specimens in Fig. 7e were cut directly from casings without
flattening process because of the buckling and spring back prob-
lems for flattened shear specimens. The fracture parameters
3.1. Calibration of the MMC fracture model
(c1 ¼ 0.20, c2 ¼ 425 MPa, c3 ¼ 0.90) were determined by using the
inverse method which required finite element simulation of each
Calibration procedure, to determine the three unknown pa-
test. Interested readers are referred to the above mentioned papers
rameters (c1, c2, c3) followed the work by Luo [12]. This involves
for details. Here only the final results are given. Fig. 7 presents
extracting five different specimens from the shell casing material
comparison of measured and calculated load displacement curves.
and performing tests in which measured were loadedisplacement
In all cases, good agreements were observed.
curves including displacements to fracture. The specimens in
Fig. 7. Comparison of forceedisplacement curves between test and simulation: (a) notched specimen; (b) specimen with central hole; (c) butterfly tension specimen; (d) punch
specimen; (e) simple shear specimen.
52 X. Zhang, T. Wierzbicki / Journal of Power Sources 280 (2015) 47e56
Fig. 8. Concertina folding of shell casing (left) and forceedisplacement curves of axial compression of shell casing (right).
X. Zhang, T. Wierzbicki / Journal of Power Sources 280 (2015) 47e56 53
Fig. 11. Test setup of three point bending test and forceedisplacement curve.
setup is shown in Fig. 12. The shell casing was filled with so called
de-aired water, which is commonly used in rock and soil tests and is
assumed to be incompressible. A piston with a steel seal plug to
release the spare water was assembled in the open end. The piston
sat on a flat plate and the side with endcap was subjected to
compression by another flat plate. The O-ring was designed to
prevent water from leaking out during the test. The clearance be-
tween the edges of shell casing and piston prevents possible sup-
ports from piston. The experimental forceedisplacement curves are
shown in Fig. 13, where the displacements were measured from the
flat plate at the endcap side during the test. The test was performed
up to the point of bursting fracture. Fig. 14. Comparison of fracture in test and simulation (contour: plastic equivalent
strain).
To simulation this test, a fine FE model of the shell casing with
varied thickness distribution along axial direction (Fig. 1 average
54 X. Zhang, T. Wierzbicki / Journal of Power Sources 280 (2015) 47e56
curve) was used and the calibrated MMC fracture model was
Table 3
Parameters of jellyroll model.
E(MPa) n k kt s ε
Fig. 16. Comparison of three-point bending test and simulation results and corresponding contour of deformation of cell components.
curve and reached 2.5 kN before failure. The above example clearly process of sheets and deep drawing process, considerable aniso-
shows that the strength of the battery is not a sum of the strength of tropic properties of the shell casing were detected in the tests.
the individual components loaded separately. This result should Those properties were well captured by introducing Hill'48 aniso-
serve as a justification that modeling of the shell casing, which is tropic yield function with the associate flow rule. Another feature of
the main subject of the present paper, is indispensable for accu- the present method was a relatively exact hardening curve valid for
rately predicting the response of the lithium-ion batteries. the post necking range which was incorporated in the FE simula-
The second example is the local indentation of the cell by a rigid tion. Modified Mohr-Coulomb (MMC) fracture model was used to
cylinder. It is seen from the simulation that the sum resistance of predict the onset of fracture and an extrusive experimental pro-
the components is much closer to that of the entire battery. The gram was conducted to determine fracture parameters.
contribution of the shell casing is not negligible and it is actually Four validation studies were performed on empty or water-
quite important in the initial phase. This is illustrated in Fig. 17. filled shell casing. Those included axial and lateral compression
tests, three point bending test and hydraulic bugle test. In each
7. Conclusion case, a very good correlation between test and simulation results
was observed.
In this paper, the plasticity and fracture behavior of shell casing Only after the calibration and complete validation of plasticity
of cylindrical lithium-ion battery was studied. Due to the rolling and fracture models of the shell casing, we were able to
Fig. 17. Comparison of Indentation test and simulation results and corresponding contour of deformation of cell components.
56 X. Zhang, T. Wierzbicki / Journal of Power Sources 280 (2015) 47e56
demonstrate that the shell casing provided the most of the resis-
Table A-1
tance of the cell in some loading situation. These properties were
Hill'48 coefficients determined from Lankford coefficient
proven by comparing bending strength of the bare jellyroll, empty
shell casing and the complete cell. It was shown that the jellyroll F G H L M N
itself provided only a small percentage of the strength of the 0.65 0.56 0.43 1.5 1.5 1.37
complete battery. The final conclusion is that mechanical behavior
of the shell casing must be an integral part of characterizing the
lithium-ion cell from the mechanical loading. 1077.
Acknowledgement
Table A-2
Lankford coefficients determined from uniaxial tensile tests
The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support of
MIT Battery Consortium. We would also like to thank our col- a ¼ 0 a ¼ 45 a ¼ 90 ravg
leagues, Yong Xia, Elham Sahraei, Stephane Marcadet, Kai Wang r 0.77 0.62 0.66 0.683
and Keunhwan Pack for valuable discussions. Thanks are due to
Pierre-Olivier Santacreu of Aperam for determining the chemical
composition of the metal casing. [2] H.S. Hamut, I. Dincer, G.F. Naterer, Exergy analysis of a TMS (thermal man-
agement system) for range-extended EVs (electric vehicles), Energy 46 (2012)
117e125.
Appendix A. Calibration of Hill's 48 anisotropic plasticity [3] H.S. Hamut, I. Dincer, G.F. Naterer, Performance assessment of thermal man-
model agement systems for electric and hybrid electric vehicles, Int. J. Energy Res. 37
(2013) 1e12.
[4] E. Sahraei, R. Hill, T. Wierzbicki, Calibration and finite element simulation of
Hill'48 anisotropic yield surface with associated flow rule and pouch Li-ion batteries for mechanical integrity, J. Power Sources 201 (2012)
isotropic hardening law was used to model the shell casing 307e321.
material. [5] E. Sahraei, J. Campbell, T. Wierzbicki, Modeling and short circuit detection of
short circuit in 18,650 Li-ion cells under mechanical abuse conditions, J. Power
Sources 220 (2012) 360e372.
f s; εp ¼ shill ðsÞ k εp ¼ 0 (A-1) [6] L. Greve, C. Fehrenbach, Mechanical testing and macro-mechanical finite
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
2 2 ffi
shill ¼ F sy sz þ Gðsz sx Þ2 þ H sx sy þ 2Lt2yz þ 2Mt2zx þ 2Nt2xy (A-2)