Investigation of Lattice Structures for the Battery Pack Protection

Abstract

Transportation market once more put emphasis on electrical and hybrid vehicles to satisfy environmental regulations and disregard fossil fuel price variations. Leading companies in the market and the researchers study on critical units of electrical and hybrid vehicles such as electric motors and batteries which directly affect the vehicle performance on different operating modes. However, battery safety on unusual cases such as crash, explosion or fire caused by the short cut inside the battery pack could damage the other units and the human inside or around the vehicle. On that point, generally, protection of the battery system accomplished by the battery housing with the usage of steel or aluminum sheets. In this study, battery housing designed with sandwich panels constructed with different lattice structures, which could be used in aviation, aerospace, manufacturing industries and biomechanical applications. High strength and stiffness, thermal flow and mass reduction opportunities makes the lat-tices foremost solution when compared with plain sheet metals. In this scope, the lat-tice structures were introduced and six different lattice types designed in Solidworks and analyzed in HyperWorks from the point of static loading with 0.2 MPa on upper cover while keeping the lower one fix. Compliance value evaluated for each lattice structure to find linear static response when loaded. Results show that hexagonal honeycomb lattice have superiority on other structures regarding to the compliance value noted as 3.82 Nmm for the load case while 23% mass increase according to plain sheet metal. For the mass reduction output, cross semicirlcle and 3D kagome lattices presents superiority.