Thermal Runaway Propagation in a Battery Pack

Application ID: 107571


Due to abuse, such as internal or external short circuits or excessive heating, an individual battery cell may go into thermal runaway, during which the battery cell generates a significant amount of heat. If enough heat is transferred between adjacent cells during a thermal runaway event, neighboring cells will also go into thermal runaway.

A thermal runaway propagating through the whole pack constitutes a severe safety hazard. When designing a battery pack, measures need to be taken in order to mitigate runaway propagation.

This tutorial simulates the heat transfer and resulting thermal runaway propagation in a pack consisting of 24 cylindrical cells using event-based heat sources.

This model example illustrates applications of this type that would nominally be built using the following products: