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Investigation of Crashworthiness of Carbon Fiber-Based Electric Vehicle Battery Enclosure Using Finite Element Analysis

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Abstract

This work investigates the crashworthiness of carbon fiber ply-based electric vehicle’s (EV) battery enclosure, which is a large component currently made using aluminum alloys. A finite element analysis based framework was used to perform the thermoforming simulation followed by as-formed structural analysis to examine the strength of carbon fiber plies in the structural design of an EV battery enclosure. Simulations were performed for the thermoforming process of the enclosure panel and side pole impact test of the as-formed part. In step one, using a thermoforming simulation, carbon fiber layers were formed on the surface of a die representing the geometry of the desired battery enclosure. In step two, a side pole impact test was simulated to investigate the crashworthiness of the battery enclosure for various impact speeds. Different crashworthiness characteristic parameters such as peak load, average load, crush load efficiency, energy absorbed, material damage, and material deformation were calculated from the results. The effect of impact speed and the number of carbon fiber layers on all the crashworthiness characteristic parameters were studied in detail. The behavior of the enclosure obtained by the crash test was compared with the behavior of an enclosure made from traditional aluminum alloys and the crashworthiness of both materials was found to be similar for a wide range of impact speeds. An isotropic elasto-plastic material model along with FLD (Forming Limit Diagram) damage model was used for aluminum alloy material.

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Data Availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the help from Arnaud Dereims and Ramesh Dwarampudi (ESI North America) regarding ESI software.

Funding

This research was funded by the US department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy under the proposal FP-D-20.1-23733 and ESI North America Inc.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA

    Shank S. Kulkarni, Forrest Hale, M. F. N. Taufique, Ayoub Soulami & Ram Devanathan

  2. The University of Tennessee Knoxville, Knoxville, TN, USA

    Shank S. Kulkarni

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  1. Shank S. Kulkarni
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  2. Forrest Hale
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Contributions

Conceptualization, S.K. and R.D.; methodology, S.K. and F.H.; software, S.K. and F.H.; formal analysis, S.K.; investigation, S.K. and F.H.; writing—original draft preparation, S.K. and M.F.N.T.; writing—review and editing, S.K., and R.D.; supervision, A.S., and R.D.; funding acquisition, R.D. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Shank S. Kulkarni.

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Kulkarni, S.S., Hale, F., Taufique, M.F.N. et al. Investigation of Crashworthiness of Carbon Fiber-Based Electric Vehicle Battery Enclosure Using Finite Element Analysis. Appl Compos Mater 30, 1689–1715 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10443-023-10146-4

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