Developing a lead battery simulation model
- Contributing to reductions of automobile fuel consumption and CO2 emission -

May 22, 2014

In corporation with our company and the Furukawa Electric Group's Furukawa Automotive Systems Inc. (Katsumi Shibata, President, Inukami County, Shiga Prefecture, hereinafter, FAS), the Furukawa Electric Group's Furukawa Electric Institute of Technology, Ltd. (Dr. Gyula Besztercey, President, Hungary, hereinafter, FETI) has developed a lead battery simulation model.

The development model is used in developing power management systems such as Battery State Sensors (hereinafter, BSS) and contributes to reductions of automobile fuel consumption and CO2 emission.

Background

In recent years, with the diffusion of idle reduction vehicles and HEV, PHEV vehicles, automobile power generation control systems and battery charging and discharging balance control systems are becoming more and more important.

Along with systems becoming increasingly advanced in the power management for these automobiles, designing by computer simulation has been attempted, but electrolytic automotive lead batteries generally used widely make the voltage and the internal resistance change their shapes in non-linear with complicated electrochemical reactions of charging and discharging. For that reason, it was extremely difficult to build a precise simulation model.

Development technologies

This time, working together with our company and FAS, FETI has developed the automobile lead battery simulation model. Based on knowledge acquired in the process of developing the BSS algorithm, which was jointly developed by our company and FETI, typical of electrolytic lead batteries, the stratification phenomenon (note 1) and the polarization relaxation after charging and discharging (note 2) are reproducible with this simulation model.

Since 2012, business expansion such as mass production of BSS has been underway at FAS, the simulation model that has been developed this time should be an effective tool in developing the power management systems.

Features

  • Works with MATLAB/Simulink of MathWorks
  • Reproducible generation and resolution of charging and discharging polarization
  • Reproducible generation and resolution of electrolyte stratification
  • Target battery parameters measurable internally

(note 1)Stratification phenomenon:
A phenomenon that the voltage at the terminal increases due to the uneven electrolyte concentration as a result of the sulfuric acid generated during battery charging settling at the bottom of the battery.

(note 2)Polarization relaxation behavior:
A phenomenon that the voltage at the terminal gradually decreases for several tens of hours as with the sulfuric acid generated around the electrode plate diffusing into all of the electrolytic solution during battery charging.