The Electric Vehicle Safety Laboratory (EVSL) investigates the safety and performance of lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles. Our work focuses on how batteries respond under different mechanical, electrical, and thermal conditions to improve their reliability and ensure safer transportation.

We use both experimental testing and computer modeling to study battery behavior during real-world crash scenarios and other stresses. These insights help reduce risks like short circuits and thermal runaway, while also guiding safer battery designs for the future of clean energy.

Our Research

Lithium-ion batteries have been used extensively in past decades in a variety of applications from portable devices to airplanes and electric vehicles. Battery packages used in electric vehicles experience dynamic loadings, shocks, and large deformations during normal operation as well as in a crash scenario. It is of paramount importance to battery manufacturers and the automotive industry to better understand how cells deform under such loadings and what conditions might damage a cell and lead to failure.

Research in Electric Vehicle Safety Laboratory (EVSL) is mainly focused on characterizing the mechanical behaviour of lithium-ion batteries, including cylindrical, pouch, and prismatic/elliptical cells. The mechanical properties of individual cell components (micro-level) as well as the entire cell (macro-level) are determined using various experimental methods and under various loading scenarios (uniaxial, biaxial, quasi-static, dynamic, etc.). Subsequently, finite element models are developed based on the obtained stress-strain relationships. The results of numerical simulations are used to predict the deformation and failure in the components, cells, modules and packs. These results are specifically useful in optimizing lithium-ion batteries and improving car safety.