Mathematical model for thermal behavior of lithium ion battery pack under overcharge

Abstract

An overcharge model of lithium ion battery pack was built by coupling the electrochemical model with thermal abuse model. The pack consists of three fully-charged batteries, each of which has a capacity of 10 Ah, using Li[Ni1/3Co1/3Mn1/3]O2 as the positive electrode. The three batteries in the pack were juxtaposed, and only the middle one was overcharged. The influences of current, convection coefficient and gap between batteries on the thermal runaway propagation were studied. The results of temperature and voltage obtained from the models were validated experimentally, and they were agreed well with the experimental data with the relative error within 6%. The results showed that the onset temperature of thermal runaway of the charged battery increased with an increase in the current, while the temperatures for the other two decreased. The temperature rate of the charged battery changed little when the convection coefficient was greater than 40 W/m2 K. The clamp of lithium ion battery pack had an important effect on the thermal runaway propagation. The occurrence of thermal runaway propagation was depended on whether there was the existence of clamp when the battery gap exceeded 5 mm.