Student and collaborators from Interfacial Multiphysics Lab awarded best paper from The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society
A team from the Interfacial Multiphysics Lab won a best student paper award from the The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society’s Light Metals and Extraction & Processing Divisions – Energy.
AAE Ph.D. candidate Bing Li, who received his master’s from AAE in 2016 and will receive his Ph.D. in December, wrote the paper with AAE Professor Vikas Tomar, Purdue Chemical Engineering Professor Vilas Pol, Naval Surface Warfare Center’s Thomas Adams and U.S. Naval Research Lab’s Corey Love.
The paper, “Integrated Sensor Network and Battery Management System for State of Health Estimation and Safety Control of Lithium-ion Batteries,” was recognized as exemplifying the application of science in solving a practical problem and being technological in nature, presenting new and significant information related to an energy topic.
The project is funded by the Office of Naval Research under the Defense University Research-to-Adoption program to increase commercial applicability of Li-ion batteries. Other students working with the Navy include Casey Jones (Navy veteran), Ayush Rai and Leonardo Fachhini.
Complex service environment influences the reliability and failure behavior of lithium-ion batteries significantly, especially in harsh conditions. Existing laboratory tests cannot well represent the safety threats in the field applications. The paper proposed monitoring the operation of Li-ion battery based system with a multiple-sensor network, which can provide a rapid multidisciplinary examination of the battery state of health. This also leads to better artificial intelligence driven smart battery management systems that have been designed and patented in the Interfacial Multiphysics Lab.
“We believe sensor technology will redefine battery management in the future and drive down the cost of systems with Li-ion batteries significantly,” said Li, whose advisor is Tomar. “It is the most promising way to understand what is going on inside your battery power supply and to predict as well as control the potential failure.”
The award is scheduled to be presented at a luncheon March 17 in Orlando, Fla., at the 150th TMS annual meeting.