MMAE Seminar by Anna Stefanopoulou: Equivalent Circuit Model for High C-Rate Discharge with an External Short Circuit

Armour College of Engineering’s Department of Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering will welcome Anna Stefanopoulou, the William Clay Ford Professor of Technology at the University of Michigan, to present a lecture, “Equivalent Circuit Model for High C-Rate Discharge with an External Short Circuit.”

The virtual seminar will take place on Wednesday, February 9, 2022, from 3:30–4:30 p.m. Contact Elena Magnus at magnus@iit.edu for the seminar details and a link to join.

Abstract

To improve emergency responder safety when dealing with battery fires, better discharge methods are needed to mitigate hazards from stranded energy and to prevent battery fire reignition. However, battery abuse experiments required to investigate new emergency response discharge methods can be expensive, especially at the pack-level. This paper extends a scalable, equivalent circuit model (ECM) with heat release from chemical decomposition to capture the electrical and thermal behavior of a cell during an external short. To capture the stranded energy and likelihood of thermal runaway, the model should accurately predict the final state-of-charge (SOC) and peak temperature. A key advantage of the proposed approach is that the ECM parameterization can be performed under normal operating conditions, reducing the amount of hazardous testing required. This can then be used to explore a controlled discharge by adjusting the external short resistance to avoid venting conditions.

Biography

Anna Stefanopoulou is the William Clay Ford Professor of Technology at the University of Michigan. She was an assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara; a visiting professor at ETH in Zurich; and a technical specialist at Ford. She earned her diploma in naval architecture and marine engineering (’91, NTUA) and her Ph.D. in electrical engineering (’96, University of Michigan).

She has one book, 21 United States patents, and 400 publications (seven of which have received awards) on estimation and multivariable control of dynamic electrochemical and thermomechanical processes in engines, fuel cells, and batteries. She has co-authored two influential reports on the cost effectiveness of fuel-efficient technologies for light-duty vehicles, sponsored by the National Academies (2017 and 2021) to help inform policymakers. She is a fellow of the ASME (’08), IEEE (’09), and SAE (’18). She was an elected member of the executive committee of the ASME Dynamics Systems and Control Division and the Board of Governors of the IEEE Control Systems Society.