Overcurrent Prottection Scheme of BMS S for Li-Ion

Battery used in Electric Bicyclles

Waraporn Puviwatnnangkurn, Bundit Tanboonjit, Nisai H. Fuengwarrodsakul
The Sirindhorn Innternational Thai-German Graduate School of Engineeering
King Monkut's
M University of Technology North Bangkok
1518 Pibulsongkram Road, Bangsue, Bangkok, Thailand

Abstract—Li-Ion batteries are widely used as a the power source
supplying the electric drive of electric biicycles. They are
sensitive to the operation outside their recommmended operating
area, which could lead to shortened life--time, damage and
explosion risk. A battery management system (BMS) is applied
in order to monitor and to protect the batteryy from the abnormal
conditions. In general, the commercial BMSs for Li-Ion batteries
he protection of the
in electric bicycles typically focus on only th
battery without consideration of other devvices in the system,
especially, the switching MOSFETs inside th he converter. This
paper presents the development of an overrcurrent protection
scheme for BMS which is capable of not only o protecting the
battery but also protecting other system components from
damages. In addition, it can discriminatte temporary fault
currents so that unnecessary interrupted operations can be
avoided. The developed scheme is designed based
b on the SOA of
MOSFETs and the current-time characteriistic of fuses. The
proposed scheme was validated by experimental results.
Keywords— battery management system, protection, electric
drive, electric bicycle, Li-Ion battery
I. INTRODUCTION
Electric bicycles require batteries that have high energy
density, high power, light weight and comppact shape. Due to
these requirements, Li-Ion batteries have beeen widely used in
high-grade electric bicycles despite their high
h costs. Li-Ion
batteries in electric bicycles are practicallyy used as the only
power supply for the electric propulsion motor.
m The popular
driving system concept of electric bicycles is
i shown in Fig. 1.
Although Li-Ion batteries have good performances, but
they are sensitive to the operation outside their
t recommended
Safe Operating Area (SOA), which couldd lead to damage,
shortened life-time and explosion risk. To ensure high
performance, safety and long life-time, ann electronic circuit
called Battery Management System (BMS S) is necessary to
monitor the Li-Ion battery and to prevvent the abnormal
conditions, for example overcharge, overcurrrent and etc [1].
The fundamental functions of BMSs usuually are to monitor
the battery status, to protect the battery froom overcurrent, to
determine SOC, and to balance the battery cells. Basically, a
BMS for Li-Ion battery should be able to protect the battery
from overcharge, overdischarge, overrtemperature and
overcurrent (by overload or short-circuit).
Normally, the capability and the complexity
c of the
overcurrent protection schemes in the commercial
c BMSs
depend on the payable cost. One major connstraint for parts in
electric bicycles is the cost minimization, so
s the BMS design
is a hard trade-off between function and cost. In our product
survey, the following informatioon is obtained.
1) Low Cost BMSs : The
T overcurrent protection of
this BMS is simple using only o op-amp comparators for
detecting overcurrents. Thus, it can set only one level limit
threshold and cannot discrimiinate overcurrent types. The
protection will immediately intterrupt the operation when the
battery current exceeds its currrent threshold. If there is high
pulsed load or temporary fault, the overcurrent protection may
react too soon and cause unneceessary power shutdown.
2) Medium Cost BMSs : The T overcurrent protection of
this BMS uses instant ICs designed
d for the BMS. The
protection of the ICs usually hash 3 levels with each constant
delay time such as 2 levels of ovvercurrent and 1 level of short-
circuit current. This feature coould avoid the aforementioned
problem in low cost BMSs. Hoowever, the delay time of short-
circuit current is fixed differentlly in each instant IC number so
it is difficult to find the IC perfectly
p designed to meet all
requirements for the electric bicycle
b system. When short-
circuit, the protection may react too slow so the other devices
such as motor converter could be b already damaged.
It can be seen that those BM
MSs focus on the protection for
the battery only without consideration for other devices in the
electric bicycle system, espeecially, power semiconductor
devices inside the converter.
This paper focuses on the development
d of an overcurrent
protection scheme of BMSs in electric bicycles which is
capable of not only protecting the battery but also protecting
other power electronic devices in the system. In addition, it
can discriminate overcurrent and also avoid unnecessary
interrupted operations. The devveloped overcurrent protection
pays attentions to the most sennsitive devices of the system,
which are the MOSFET switchees in the converter as shown in
Fig. 1. The developed scheme is designed based on the SOA
of MOSFETs to cover various possible
p faults in the system.
Fig. 1 Electric propulsion system
s of electric bicycles

978-1-4799-0545-4/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEE

EE
 II. DESIGN CONCEPT
A. System Requirements
Our considered drive system for electricc bicycles is shown
in Fig. 1. The system specifications are listeed as follows,
• Motor : BLDC, 36V, 250W
• Converter : DC-link voltage 36V, 7220VA
• Fuse : ATOF 30A
• Battery : Li-Ion (LiFePO4), 36V, 10Ah
The overcurrent protection scheme off the BMS will be
designed to operate with this system. The major design
objective is to protect all semiconductor devvices in the system
under all overcurrent conditions.
B. Possible Overcurrents in the System
From the system in Fig. 1, the possible overcurrent can be
divided into two cases, overload and shortt-circuit. Overload
occurs when the BLDC drive draws the batttery current higher
than the allowed limit, for example, uphill driving for a long
time. For short-circuit faults, there are fouur possible cases as
shown in Fig. 2. From these four cases, onnly two are critical
and can cause permanent damages to thhe semiconductors
(MOSFET), 1. Short-through in the MO OSFETs branch by
error switching or temporary faults andd 2. Short-circuit
between motor lines.
temperature of 175°C, the Onn-Resistance (RDS(on)) for the
calculation of VDS of MOSFET Ts must be RDS(on) at 175°C as
well, not the nominal RDS(on). In
I this case, RDS(on) at 175°C is
about 2.4 times of the nominnal RDS(on) at 25°C or about
30.88mΩ.
The used Li-Ion (LiFePO4) battery has very low internal
resistance and can supply extremmely high short-circuit current.
For the capacity of 10Ah, the short-circuit current measured
by an experiment is about 1600A (16C). So the VDS of the
MOSFET will be calculated by b this current at 160A. The
resulting VDS of the MOSFET iss about 5V. By plotting VDS in
the diagram in Fig. 3, there are three cutting points of current
versus time. These 3 points aree used to interpolate the critical
current-time limit of the MOSF FET under short-circuit fault as
shown in Fig. 4.

Fig. 2 Possible short-circuit faullts

Fig. 3 SOA for MOSFET IRF28007 (Source:International Rectifier)

In automotive applications, the most basic overcurrent

protection typically applies ATOF fuses. When short-circuit
occurs, the fuses normally protect cables from burning and
prevent flames but they are too sloow to save the
semiconductors in the converter. To protecct the MOSFETs in
Fig. 2, the battery must be timely disconnnected before the
MOSFETs are destroyed by high currentts. Therefore, the
design of the protection scheme must takke the SOA of the
used MOSFETs into account. The protectiion scheme and the
appropriate cut-off time will be developped based on the
following discussion about the SOA of usedd MOSFETs.
Fig. 4 Current-time limit cuurve of MOSFET and fuse
C. Safe Operating Range of used MOSFET Ts in the Converter
Most datasheets of MOSFETs providde the information
about the safe operating range called SOA A. The limits are D. Selection of Current-Time Protection
P Curve
defined by maximum drain-source voltagee (VDS) and pulsed From the previous subsectioon, the current-time limit curve
drain current (ID) under different pulse perriods, under which of MOSFETs can be determineed. The result shows that the
the MOSFETs can operate safely in connducting condition current-time curve of the fuse is not sufficient to protect the
[2][3]. MOSFETs as shown in Fig. 4. 4 To protect semiconductor
Fig. 3 shows the considered SOA of MOSFET
M IRF2807 devices, the BMS must responsse faster than the conventional
used in the converter. Since the SOA is givven for the junction fuse [4] or ATOF fuse 30A.

Fig. 5 Current-time protection curve of the proposedd protection algorithm
The protection algorithm will be deveeloped to response
with the current-time protection curve in Fig.
F 5 based on the
interrupting time behavior of the conventioonal fuse which has
a characteristic of i2t curve. This inverse current-time curve
characteristic emulates the behavior of reelay [5]. Another
protection scheme detecting di/dt in [6] couuld give a very fast
response. However, the MOSFETs do noot require such fast
interruption. The BMS will act as an elecctronic breaker that
can set the interruption time and also set the protecting
current. However, the fuse is still applied in the system as the
backup protection in case the BMS failss. In Fig. 5, the
current-time protection curve for the BM MS is obtained by
setting the i2t threshold at 4A2s, whereas the
t i2t threshold of
2
the fuse is 1510A s.
E. Current Supplied by DC-Link Capacitorr
When a short-circuit fault in Fig. 2 occcurs, the DC-link
capacitor is an additional source which also supplies short-
circuit current. Therefore, the fault current supplied by the
DC-link capacitor should be taken intto account. An
experiment was carried out to measuree the short-circuit
current supplied by the DC-link capaacitor at different
capacitance with the voltage of 50V.
Fig. 6 Discharging current under shortt-circuit
by different DC-link capacitors at 50V
5
Fig. 6 shows the results of this experiment. It can be seen
that the stored energy can be dischargedd with high pulse
current in a short time period (< hundreds us).
u The total fault
current is the sum of the battery current and this capacitor
current. Since the capacitor current deccays very fast, the
integral current-time is still under the SOAS limit of the
MOSFETs in the converter as shown in Figg. 5. However, too
high peak current can still destroy the MOS SFETs. Therefore,
the DC-link capacitance shouldd be appropriately selected to
prevent too high peak currentt. The DC-link capacitor of
electric bicycle converters is typically
t chosen in a range of
470µF-1000µF at 36V or 48V. From Fig. 6, the typical short-
circuit current supplied by the DC-link
D capacitor will be kept
under 350A, which is still safe for
f the MOSFETs.
As a conclusion, the DC-liink capacitor adds more peak
current into the total fault currrent. The peak current varies
with the capacitance. Thereffore, the DC-link capacitance
should be appropriately selecteed in order to avoid too high
peak current at the beginning off the short-circuit fault.
III. IMPLEMENTATION AND ALGORITHM
Fig. 7 illustrates the hardw
ware structure of the designed
BMS using a battery managemeent IC (ISL94212-Intersil) with
cell balancing function. It can measure the cell voltage up to
12 cells with 4 channels for temmperature measurement. This
IC will be controlled by a low w-power 16-bit microcontroller
(MSP430F247-Texas Instrumennt).
Fig. 7 BMS block
b diagram
The protection part consistts of two MOSFET switches
which control the dischargingg and charging operation as
shown in Fig. 7. These two MO OSFETs are manipulated by the
microcontroller. The overcuurrent protection algorithm is
implemented on this BMS plattform by focusing only on the
overcurrent during discharging operation.
o
The current sensor is impleemented by using an R shunt.
Its advantages are high current measurement range, small size
and low cost. This current sensor has the sensing range
between -200A to +200A. Thhe current resolution for 200A
range with 12-bit ADC of microocontroller is 48mA per unit.
A. Selection of MOSFET Switchhes in BMS
For the voltage and current range of Li-Ion battery used in
electric bicycles, MOSFETs are a frequently chosen as the
switches for the BMS. MOSF FETs can interrupt the current
flow with quick response without
w persisting arcs during
interruption, which degrades the rating of fuses [7]. In
addition, MOSFETs are also sm mall, compact and cheap.
To ensure that MOSFETs in i the BMS can survive short-
circuit situations; they need too withstand high pulse current
and high power dissipation. One single MOSFET
M with such
high current rating is usually expensivee. Therefore, the
solution with parallel connected MOSFETss is used, since the
MOSFETs with lower current rating are inexpensive.
MOSFETs have a good current sharinng performance for
parallel connection because their possitive temperature
coefficient characteristic. If any of them carry
c current more
than the others, the current share willl be balanced by
MOSFETs themselves. In addition, the swiitch resistance goes
down in inverse proportion to the num mber of paralleled
MOSFETs. This leads to low power lossees and increase the
switch’s efficiency. In this BMS platform, one switch is
realized by 2 MOSFETs connected in paralllel.
B. Design of Protection Algorithm
Fig. 8 shows the proposed algorithm ussed to compute i2t.
The algorithm computes the summation off the i2t in moving Fig. 9 BMS underr short-circuit test
window period. The time span of the moving m window is
determined by the longest interrupting tim me for the lowest
overcurrent limit (in this case 3.7ms for 33AA shown in Fig. 5). In the first test, the shortt-circuit fault occurs between
The sampling time is 100µs. So the microccontroller considers motor lines (Number 4 in Fig. 2) 2 and a relay switch is used to
only the i2t summation of 37 samplings before the present short-circuit between two mottor lines. Fig. 10 shows the
sampling. The considered window is moveed with 100µs step interruption by the fuse that taakes totally about 96ms. The
for each sampling. If the summation of the i2t in the short-circuit current is about 150A.
1 In this test, the result
considered moving window exceeds the i2t set threshold, the shows that the interrupting timee of the fuse (96ms) is too slow
microcontroller will turn off the dischargingg MOSFETs. to protect the MOSFETs in the t converter. After the test,
MOSFETs were already dam maged by high short-circuit
current.
In Fig. 10, at the beginningg of the fault, the short-circuit
current is high due to the low w initial RDS(on) of MOSFETs.
After that, the short-circuit current gradually decreases
because the MOSFETs get warm mer and RDS(on) become higher.
Until about 55ms, one of the MOSFETs
M is damaged and the
other becomes damaged laterr, so the resistance of both
MOSFETs decreases suddenly to a short-circuit resistance at
the moment of damage. Therefore, the short-circuit current
has a sudden change at the mooment in which the MOSFETs
are damaged.
In the second test, the desiigned BMS was tested by the
identical procedure as the first test.
t The protection process of
Fig. 8 Behaviors of the developed protectioon algorithm the BMS was verified by the ressult in Fig. 11.

IV. EXPERIMENTS
A prototype of the BMS using the devveloped overcurrent
protection algorithm was built and tested. Fig.
F 9 illustrates the
hardware set-up of the bicycle drive system for testing the
BMS (see the diagram in Fig. 1). The first short-circuit test
was carried out without the BMS and the fuse is used as the
only overcurrent protection. For the seconnd short-circuit test,
the BMS is used together with the fuse for f the overcurrent
protection. These two experiments were performed in the
laboratory under the ambient temperature. The
T battery used in
this test is a Li-Ion (LiFePO4) with 36V/10A
Ah. Fig. 10 Interrupting time of thee 30A fuse in 96ms (First test)

Fig. 11 Interrupting time of BMS in 350µs (Second test)
The protection algorithm determines thee summation of the
i2t in the considered moving window of shhort-circuit current.
When that summation exceeds the i2t threshhold which is 4A2s,
the BMS interrupts within 350µs without any a damages to the
MOSFETs in the converter.
In addition, the interrupting response of
o the BMS can be
adjusted to match with other MOSFETs by setting a new i2t
threshold. The response time is proportionnal to the value of
the i2t threshold. As a conclusion, the experrimental results are
validated the functionality of the implemented protection
algorithm.
REFEREENCES
[1] D. Andrea, Battery Managem ment Systems for Large Lithium-Ion
Battery Packs, Massachusetts: Arrtech House, 2010.
[2] J. Schoiswoh, “Linear mode opeeration and safe operating diagram of
power MOSFETs,” Application Note, Infineon, vol. 0.92, June 2010.
[Online]. Available: http://www.iinfineon.com/
[3] “Understanding power MOSFE ET datasheet parameters,” AN11158
Application Note, NXP, rev. 2-116, August 2012. [Online]. Available:
http://www.nxp.com/
[4] T. M. Crnko, “Current-limitinng fuse update-new style fuse for
protection of semiconductor devices,” IEEE Transactions on Industrial
Applications, vol. IA-15, no. 3, pp.
p 308-312, May/June 1979.
[5] D. Campos, E. Moreno, and D. D Torres, “Test and evaluation time-
inverse over-current protection algorithm
a using SIMULINK,” in the 7th
WSEAS International Conference, Turkey, pp. 69-74, 2008.
[6] A. K. Khargekar, and P. P. Kum mar, “A novel scheme for protection of
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[7] H. C. Cline, “Fuse protection off DC systems,” in the Annual Meeting
of the American Power Conferennce, USA, pp. 1-6, 1995.

V. CONCLUSIONS
The overcurrent protection in the elecctric bicycle drive
system using only fuses is not sufficieent to protect the
MOSFETs in the converter from damagges by high short-
circuit current. This paper proposed the adapted
a overcurrent
protection for the BMS, so that the shoort-circuit fault is
interrupted before the MOSFETs becom me damaged. The
proposed algorithm is developed based on o the current-time
curve of the fuse and the SOA limit of thee MOSFETs. As a
result, the BMS should not protect only thee Li-Ion battery but
also the converter. So the system reliabilityy is increased. Due
to the current-time characteristic, the algoriithm can also avoid
unnecessary interrupted operation under temporary faults.
The performance of the developed protecttion algorithm was
successfully verified by experimental results.