Development of automotive battery pack integrating structural, thermal and electric characteristics

As the automotive industry goes through developing a new generation of fully electric or hybrid vehicles with a native electric platform, electrification of older generations of ICE cars as a retro-modification method might also be appealing to certain costumers, as it is not only more environmentally sustainable in terms of reutilizing the older vehicles and avoiding manufacturing, scrappage and new-car development cost, but it is also a more cost-effective solution for popularizing the electric mobility. The aim of this work is to develop a modular lithium-ion battery pack for an electrified classic Fiat model, based on the customer requests while applying the industry standards on the overall architecture of the pack as well as verifying the safety aspect of the design. Firstly, the various design approaches and configurations for energy storage systems currently used in electric vehicles are discussed. Then, based on the set of parameters like dimension and placement of the battery package a design approach that could integrate structural, thermal and energy capacity requisites was devised. The design was carried out for each element of the battery system with respect to the requirements enforced by the regulations as well as the potential customer. Then the design was verified by going through individual structural dynamic and static finite element analysis on the load-bearing elements and the module assembly based on the vehicle safety regulations as well as operational loading cases in order to verify the design as well as find the weak points for further optimization. In the last chapter, there is a conclusion with a summary and a discussion regarding further applications of this modular design on other vehicles as well as a discussion on the battery pack prototyping.