Automatic method for the estimation of li-ion degradation test sample sizes required to understand cell-to-cell variability

Abstract

The testing of battery cells is a long and expensive process, and hence understanding how large a test set needs to be is very useful. This work proposes an automated methodology to estimate the smallest sample size of cells required to capture the cell-to-cell variability seen in a larger population. We define cell-to-cell variation based on the slopes of a linear regression model applied to capacity fade curves. Our methodology determines a sample size which estimates this variability within user specified requirements on precision and confidence. The sample size is found using the distributional properties of the slopes under a normality assumption, and an implementation of the approach is available on GitHub.For the five datasets in the study, we find that a sample size of 8–10 cells (at a prespecified precision and confidence) captures the cell-to-cell variability of the larger datasets. We show that prior testing knowledge can be leveraged with machine learning models to operationally optimise the design of new cell-testing, leading up to a 75% reduction in experimental costs.