Battery Aspects on Fires in Electrified Vehicles

Other conference contribution, 2014

Safety issues concerning the use of large lithium-ion batteries in electrified vehicles are discussed based on abuse test results of lithium-ion cells together with safety devices for cells. The presented abuse tests are; propane fire test, external heating test (oven), overcharge and short circuit. It was found that in a fire, cells with higher state of charge (SOC) gave a higher heat release rate (HRR) while the total heat release (THR) had a lower correlation with SOC. One fire test resulted in a hazardous projectile from a cylindrical cell. Toxic gas emissions of hydrogen fluoride (HF) were measured in the fire tests and it was found that the total amount of HF released increased with lower SOC.