A new method to perform Lithium-ion battery pack fault diagnostics – Part 2: Algorithm performance in real-world scenarios and cell-to-cell transferability

Abstract

The last decade has witnessed significant progress towards zero-emission electric aviation. Lithium-ion batteries are at the centre of this technological transformation. However, electric flight requires suitable considerations for safety concerns associated with Lithium-ion batteries. Fault diagnostic approaches aimed at validating the safety of batteries before every flight have emerged as an attractive prospect. In this pursuit, a three-paper series proposing a novel fault diagnosis algorithm is presented. The algorithm is capable of diagnosing faults in an aircraft battery using the data collected during charging and was previously validated for a particular cell type under steady charging conditions. In this paper, two extensional aspects of the algorithm are investigated: cell-to-cell transferability and disparate charging conditions. While crucial for practical implementation, these aspects were overlooked in previous literature. Through experiments conducted at module-level, it was revealed that the algorithm could diagnose faults for a different cell type with minimal preliminary cell-level characterisation, thus demonstrating its ease of transferability. Moreover, modifications introduced in the algorithm enabled it to perform fault diagnosis under unsteady charging conditions for an aerospace module despite significant internal temperature gradients. Thus, the successful working of the algorithm in the considered aspects, which are unprecedented in literature, prove its feasibility for real-life application.

Keywords

• Li-ion batteries
• EVTOL
• Electric aircraft
• Fault diagnosis
• Incremental capacity