failure of electric batteries because of short-circuiting

 failure of electric batteries because of short-circuiting

Abstract

The paper gives out the results of the failure of electric batteries because of short-circuiting. Batteries frequently utilized in electric batteries are explored. Based on the researched data of performed tests, the performance of batteries in electric vehicles is highlighted in the paper. Data on the experiments of short-circuit conducted on the electric vehicle batteries is analyzed using Standardized Work Sheet and TPM techniques. Quality control is the key to enhancing the lifespan of electric vehicles and minimizing the risks that result from battery failure in the electric vehicle.

Introduction

Background information

Electrical Vehicles (EVs) are getting popular in today’s world, and most of the major automotive manufactures have at least one model of EV. EVs are straightforward to run and take care of standard vehicles. When electric cars are being operated, they do not emit gases, particularly when electricity generated from renewable energies is used to charge them. However, as electric vehicles become common, they’re making another issue of battery disposal, burning, caught fire, or even exploding that causes severe injuries and may cause death. The electrochemical storage device of electric vehicles has resulted in high-cost safety and low range concerns, hence making it difficult for companies running electric vehicles to position themselves in the market on a large scale.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the study is to find out the quality requirements of electronic vehicle batteries concerning safety and lifetime challenges. In the article, “Engineering management may be the most unnatural act of all,” Driscoll (2016) explains engineering management as a process that involves individuals who can influence people to adopt their innovative ideas of developing affordable products that meet users’ needs. Leverage, innovation, trust, and efficiency are the issues addressed in this article by Driscoll. He highlights the frequent group meetings in the organization as one of the things engineer managers ought to shorten to create enough time for engineers to concentrate on their work. This, in turn, will make engineers design appropriate ways of managing the quality of batteries of electric vehicles.

Problem Statement

A short circuit in EVs batteries would cause the cells to fail. This, in turn, would lead to failure of battery and even cause fire and injuries. Vibration, crush, and penetration might lead to danger of chemical exposure and fire ignition in cells. Therefore, quality control in the process of producing electric batteries is necessary to avoid the production of defective products. Standardizing procedures for identifying and handling fluctuations in the quality of electric batteries would be necessary to minimize the negative effects of defective batteries.

Objectives

– Using LEAN and Engineering tools and techniques to improve the life of a battery

– Implement 5WHY method to find out the root cause of issues

– Use the histogram to compare fuels and electric cars fire incidents

– Improve quality standard and product reliability

– Make SWS for total preventive and proactive maintenance of car batteries

Literature review

Introduction

In this chapter, researches carried out earlier is considered. Electrical engineering is focused on building the electrical components of structures or items. Improving the life of a battery, causes of electric vehicles batteries failure, Improving quality standard and product reliability as well as prevention and proactive maintenance of car batteries is explored.

Improving the life of an electric battery

The working of any electrical components requires to be monitored by the engineer as he continuous to make the necessary improvements of the item. For instance, according to Gutfleisch et al. (2011), transistors being a standard component of any electrical appliances have undergone many improvements in terms of efficiency and size. The very first transistors were big that it could occupy a room that can contain an average of fifty students while the current transistors are very small in size. These are issues that could be noted. Information from the engineers’ journal shows how these engineers used to work very hard to improve the efficiency of these transistors. According to the journal by Harrison et al. (2003), on the same note, they used to consume a lot of power as compared with the current transistors. It can be observed that the size has greatly reduced over the years. Similarly, electric vehicles batteries need to be monitored to minimize negative effects that may arise from them being defective. Schnell and Reinhart (2016) developed a quality-oriented production planning tool to assemble battery modules. They defined critical product and process characteristics that resulted in deriving appropriate quality assurance systems of measuring equipment catalogue. Nevertheless, Schnell and Reinhart (2016)’s approach concentrates on the assembling of modules and disregards the process of producing complex cells.

Quality management during the process of producing electric batteries is necessary to minimize costs and enhance the quality of batteries. Yang et al. (2016) argue that total quality management tools can be utilized to identify and handle fluctuations in the quality of electric batteries despite the technology employed, process structure, or cell format adopted. Early detection of deviations in the production process reduces the scrap rates and facilitates process control and feedback. Analyzing the corresponding production chain becomes the first point to detect deviations. Defining external and internal processes regarding the requirements becomes the second point for detecting deviations. Finally, the intermediate and final product properties need to be looked at. Quality features such as safety, performance, and lifetime fall in the external requirements while intermediate product properties are internal requirements that influence subsequent process steps and intermediate products (Müller and Oehm, 2019). This implies that enhancing the quality of electric batteries requires early detection of deviations and controlling them based on the set standards of manufacturing batteries.

Causes of electric vehicles batteries failure

Each battery is made for a specific use, and no battery is perfect. Most batteries have been optimized for extended runtime. Zubi et al. (2018) argue that consumers consider battery longevity in most instances less important as compared to low cost and small size of the battery. Batteries are similar and all of them run for a while and are recharged as well as replaced once the capacity fades. Poorly designed batteries have the potential of becoming dangerous to human beings. According to Brandt and Garche (2019), electric vehicle batteries manufacturers have become conscious of the risks involved in poorly designed batteries and have designed safety measures into the cells. The user of the battery is given instructions on using the battery, but some users find it difficult to follow the given instructions of the use of the battery. They end up the short-circuiting battery, hence unleashing destructive power that destroys the capability of an electric battery. Short-circuiting makes the discharging period very short, leading to a power transfer of many watts (Demirtas, Yilmaz and Kanber, 2018). A lot of energy is stored in the batteries. Therefore, short-circuiting batteries result in high currents and temperatures in the battery that breaks down chemical components that make up the battery. The broken components lead to building up of pressure in the battery that causes the battery to have a catastrophic failure. The failure can eventually lead to unpredictable consequences such as fire or uncontrolled rupture of the cell.

Improving quality standard and product reliability

In relation to manufacturing perspective, quality is determined by meeting product specifications. Mitra (2016) defines quality as total features and characteristics of service or product that enables it to meet the need of a customer satisfactorily. This implies that quality is the ability to meet or exceeding the expectations of customers. Therefore, service quality can be defined as evaluating the goodness or badness of a product or service generally. Electric vehicle batteries manufacturers need to identify key product quality determinants to be able to enhance quality. Staff and the right technology in the manufacturing company are the key propellers of product quality. Larivière et al. (2017) support this argument by highlighting that well trained and motivated staff with the right technology would enhance the quality of a product. Efficient utilization of resources, competitors, and cost are some of the factors apart from the customer that determines the level of product quality in a company.

Driscoll (2016) argues that engineers’ concentration on innovation would be enhanced if any destructors in their presence would be eliminated. The provision of adequate food to engineers has also been recommended by the author as one of the things to engineers’ environment better for innovation. The availability of necessary tools and systems that are efficient and effective would add to engineers’ success in their innovation. The author agrees with Stu Feldman, the inventor of making who suggested that for efficient working with the group, it ought to be ten or fewer members to avoid the team suffering from communication breakdowns. Being innovative, as the author has highlighted, is one of the skills that engineer managers ought to possess to generate new products that will meet users’ needs regularly. He identified chaos, risk, and chemistry as significant items that facilitate innovation in engineer management. He argues that change occurs best when there seems to be chaos. Grove (1996) supports this argument in his philosophy, which stated that confusion should be allowed to reign first before people reign in them. This means that people generate new ideas in times of crisis to solve the challenge at hand. Therefore, engineer managers should allow different opinions from their staff and even go further to accept rebels in the organization as this will enable innovation to thrive. Staff in any organization would hold different views in solving an issue. Giving such individuals space would help in encouraging change in the team and create batteries that can overcome emerging issues in their utilization.

Engineer teams should consider the kind of risk they take to avoid an unnecessary loss to the organization. Taking risks that are likely to yield positive value is highly encouraged by the author. According to Driscoll (2016), engineer managers should help teams with diversity in academic and professional backgrounds as they are in an excellent position to innovate. He highlights trust as the key to success in technology. He suggests that engineer managers should assess production systems efficiency and try to improve them to reduce time consumption by inefficiencies. This way, engineers in the organization will have sufficient time and be more productive. In case an error occurs in the team, the author suggests that people should be willing to own their mistakes. That way, they will be in a position to solve them. Engineers should be given a chance to carry out operation services to create a sense of ownership to them. This will motivate them to come with new ideas for resolving the issue at hand.

Prevention and proactive maintenance of car batteries

The performance and efficiency of an electric battery are essential for the success of a company. Driscoll (2016) argue that people prefer products that improve their lives without encoring costs. He gives an example of buying a car that does not use gas or electricity as the most preferred by the majority of people. Therefore, he encourages engineers to focus on developing such products to improve the lives of people.

Driscoll agrees that management is an unnatural act. He describes engineering management as the most unnatural act of all. He explains that engineers are unique because they are self-centered despite being convinced by logic. He advises that the right management in engineering is the solution to doing the best work in any organization. He suggests that engineer managers ought to embrace the talents of software engineers. Engineers should be able to develop soft wares that enable early detection of deviations of electric vehicle batteries to avoid a huge losses that may result from the failure of the battery.

Data Collection

In this case, the engineer prepared questionnaires, and only the professional expert responded to them. For instance, some of the possible questions that were contained in the questionnaire included: Do you agree that electrical engineers have made quality electric vehicle batteries in the world? In such instances, the possible responses included (a) strongly agree (b) agree (c) now aware (d) disagree. In addition, the research utilized secondary data obtained from previously written documents regarding electric vehicle battery quality-management.

Electrical engineering is a science many of its experimental part is done at laboratories. According to the views of Moskewicz et al. (2001), to prove an argument in engineering, you need to provide a practical result. This means one has to demonstrate his arguments with a real working item. For instance, the manufacture of lead lights being the newest technology in engineering. For the purpose of this research, a good experiment is required to prove the argument that electrical engineers can build a quality battery that does not lead to various issues. The experiment part is a critical part of this research. The nature of the experiment dictates the amount of budget that was covered in the purchase of components for the experiment.

Methodology

The researcher employed FMEA, 5WHY’s, Histogram, TPM, and SWS methods. FMEA entailed an arranged list of the process steps, with each step’s potential failure modes (ways in which the process step may go wrong or not produce its desired/required outcome). Five WHY’s or Ishikawa diagram technique was employed to find out the significant reasons and root causes which lead to batteries explosion. Data was collected and analyzed using different analysis techniques. TPM and SWS (Standardized Work Sheet) enabled the development of a method of pro-active maintenance and disposal of batteries to save the environment and reduce the incidents. Hypotheses were used to test and analyze as well as check new ways to improve the battery.

Current Statistical Analysis

Results

The research looked at the current energy device types utilized in electric vehicles. The following batteries were analyzed: prismatic type LiFePO4 battery with 60Ah capacity, prismatic type LiFePO4 with 160Ah, LiFePO4 battery with 20 Ah capacity, LiFePO4 battery with 8 Ah capacity, Li-PO with 1000 mAh capacity, Li-Ion with 2200 mAh capacity. These batteries were then compared to a tested lead Acid battery with 150 Ah capacity and energy density of 50 Wh/kg.