Testing a Thermal Monitoring Function of a Battery Management System (BMS) Controller

The Task

Thermal monitoring of a lithium-ion battery pack with a battery management system (BMS) to avoid a thermal runaway.

The Challenge

To simulate the electrical and thermal characteristic of a battery, the thermal behavior of each individual battery cell and its thermal interaction with neighbor cells must be considered. The cooling system must also be taken into account.

The Solution

The ASM Battery Multicell Model supports the coupled thermal-electrical simulation of each battery cell. The simulated temperatures of individual cells point to a certain temperature distribution pattern within the battery pack. This, in turn, can be used as the temperature signals for the temperature sensors at their individual locations. The dSPACE cell voltage emulation hardware (EV1077) is used to connect the BMS controller. A cooling plate is simulated for up to six battery pack surfaces by defining cooling areas with a specific heat flux density. All parameters, such as the initial temperature of each cell and the geometric battery topology, can be set with an intuitive graphical parameterization in ModelDesk.