NASA Engineering Safety Center Battery Working Group Prepared by Barbara McKissock, Patricia Loyselle, and Elisa Vogel NASA Glenn Research Center There are a wide number of chemistries used in Li-Ion batteries. Li-Ion batteries avoid the reactivity, safety, and abuse sensitivity issues involved with the use of lithium metal cathodes by. This guideline discusses a standard approach for defining, determining, and addressing safety, handling, and qualification standards for lithium-ion (Li-Ion) batteries to help the. The performance required from the battery for a specific application should be determined and the relative importance of the different factors should be prioritized prior to selection of the cell to be used, since they interact with.
[PDF Version]
Can lithium batteries be used in aerospace applications?
The use of Li/Li-ion batteries in aerospace applications is still fairly new, and there aren't many other incidents that are the same magnitude of the Boeing Dreamliner 787-8 incident; however, there are numerous other lithium battery failures that are of high relevance to the aerospace community with respect to safety and reliability.
Are batteries safe?
Batteries and their systems must be inherently safe through the selection of appropriate design features or the use of appropriate safety devices, as fail operational/fail safe combinations to eliminate the hazard potential.
Are lithium-ion batteries a safety hazard?
Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) lacking the proper thermal, mechanical, and electrical safety hazard controls may be at risk to meet mission specified safety requirements. Recent industry experience has shown that cell-to-cell propagating thermal runaway (TR) may be the most catastrophic hazard facing LIB technologies.
What is the hazard severity of a battery?
For aerospace applications, the hazard severity of the battery is evaluated as part of the battery design evaluation and approval. Battery electrical design should minimize the risk of leakage currents from the cell terminals to the battery case and electrostatic discharge and should meet all EMI and compatibility requirements for the application.
Recent aerospace-related lithium/lithium-ion (Li/Li-ion) battery failures Lithium batteries, or more specifically Li-ion batteries, receive large amounts of technical and media attention with respect to safety; the primary example being the Boeing 787-8 APU battery failure that occurred in January 2013.
Batteries and battery containers must be designed to survive all environmental conditions of a mission or application. This includes launch/abort/landing loads, transportation, and handling environments. Mounting or sealing of cells in a battery case should not interfere with cells vents or rupture disks.