A Novel Experimental Testing Setup and Calibration Procedures for Cylindrical Cell Thermal Models

Temperature is known to have a significant impact on the performance and ageing of Li-ion batteries. Because of it, their temperature is monitored and controlled implementing a Battery Thermal Management System (BTMS) in which lumped-parameter thermal models are commonly used to estimate the cells’ thermal behavior, due to their low computation effort. In this regard, it is important to plan a proper calibration procedure able to accurately assess the cell’s thermal properties. While literature presents several methodologies with different levels of accuracy and complexity, there is a lack of a systematic approach. Furthermore, only a few works take into account the heat lost through the cell holder by conduction. In this work, a re-designed cell holder is introduced to minimize its thermal interaction with the cell during testing, then it provides a better understanding of thermal models calibration by comparing two simple, but effective, testing procedures. The specific heat capacity of a cylindrical cell is evaluated by carrying out two testing procedures in which heat flow direction is inverted. In the first procedure, heat is actively generated from the cell, while in the second procedure it is externally provided using a flexible polyimide heater. This has led to two different formulations of the energy balance equation that differ from the internal thermal dissipation modeling. At the end, a validation has been carried out implementing a current profile generated from the UDDS drive cycle. Both formulations have shown to have the similar temperature prediction with a RMSE of 0.484 °C.