Comprehensive Battery Safety Risk Evaluation: Aged Cells versus Fresh Cells Upon Mechanical Abusive Loadings

Despite their wide applications, lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have been struggling with safety risks arising from different lifetime stages. Here, the NCMA pouch cell is taken as an example, and of both fresh aged cells three milestone stages, that is, internal short circuit (ISC) triggering risk, ISC mode, subsequent thermal runaway (TR) consequence investigated. By combining mechanical abusive testing physics-based models on commercialized various states-of-health (SOH) states-of-charge, it discovered delays decay SOH soft mode will be triggered more frequently, which mainly due to behaviors current collectors. The temperature rises peak during TR also become milder for reduced capacity deterministic process. Results here provide a mechanistic explanation risk comparison between cells, offering cornerstone guidance evaluation design next-generation safer LIBs.