Design Optimization of Battery Structural Components

Abstract

The creation of Sustainable Development Goals by the United Nations and has spurred the growth of electric vehicles leading to the development of advanced bat tery technologies to satisfy the growing need for longer driving ranges, and faster charging times from the general public and a need to identify cheaper alternative to current solutions from the Original Equipment Manufacturers. In this master thesis, alternate design solutions to the hardware components within the battery pack, which contribute towards the needs of one or both of the concerned parties are explored. To meet the objectives of developing a methodology to identify improvement areas, followed by proposing modification, a thorough study on the current state of the art in battery technology at both Volvo and competitors is studied extensively. Based on the collected data and utilizing the product development principles developed by Clarke and Wheelwright, several areas for improvement were identified before being narrowed down into "Busbars" and "BDU sheet metal". A Simulation Driven approach and a Design Driven approach respectively are devel oped, revolving around generation and evaluation of various ideas before finalising the concepts to recommend for further development. The final proposed solutions include changing the material of certain busbars to alu minum with little to no change in dimension along with proposing a hybrid material design for the sheet metal part made of a layer of plastic injection molded onto a sheet metal part. The concepts proposed achieve a cost reduction of 89% and 42%, and a weight reduction of 68% and 30% respectively, thereby providing cost bene fit to Volvo while contributing towards improvement in mileage, helping the end user.