Date: 25/06/2012

ANSYS working with GM, NREL and ESim to improve vehicle batteries

ANSYS, General Motors LLC, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and ESim are leveraging engineering simulation technology to optimize electric and hybrid vehicle battery performance. The team reached important milestones during the past year in support of the DOE's Computer Aided Engineering for Electric Drive Vehicle Batteries (CAEBAT) project. GM awarded ANSYS a subcontract to develop battery software tools to help speed up development of next-generation electric vehicles (EV). The project is a result of a competitive procurement through the DOE's NREL that was presented to GM last year.

The main goal of the CAEBAT project is to incorporate existing and new battery models into engineering simulation software to shorten design cycles and optimize batteries for increased performance, safety and life span. The project is driving EV innovation. The GM-ANSYS-ESim team's achievements over the past year comprise prototyping and validating three electrochemistry modeling approaches. The partners also prototyped a co-simulation feature, which combines battery multiphysics and system simulation technologies. This enables engineers to shed redundant details and increase simulation efficiency.

"Traditionally, the EV battery industry depends mostly on the expensive and time-consuming process of design-build-test-break for prototyping and manufacturing these batteries," said Jan Aase, director of the vehicle development research lab at GM Global R&D. "However, the virtual development of engineered products has proven to be an effective way of evaluating many
design alternatives. This specific team was selected because of their individual track records of success in their respective fields for providing reliable technologies that lead to efficient products."

The team is leveraging NREL's experience in multiphysics, multi-scale modeling of lithium-ion battery systems. The resulting design tools to be made commercially available through ANSYS. GM plans to validate and apply the model to its electric vehicles in development.

"ANSYS is well known for providing reliable simulation technology to enable sustainable design across a wide range of industries, including automotive," said Sandeep Sovani, manager of global automotive strategy at ANSYS. "The recent demands from customers to make vehicles more practical coupled with government regulations are creating unprecedented innovation within the auto industry. ANSYS is proud to be at the forefront of this innovation surge by developing software tools that will accelerate the production of safe, reliable, high-performance and long-lasting lithium-ion batteries for EVs and make vehicles more fuel efficient and sustainable."

NREL expects that the resulting systems to become commercial offerings in about two years. This initiative is funded by DOE's Vehicle technologies program in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
Author: Srinivasa Reddy N