Virtualizing Battery Module and Cell Performance Across Length Scales: From Microstructure to System
Abstract
As engineers continue to develop battery systems for electric vehicles, virtual engineering must be used to evaluate the performance of the battery pack under aggressive charging and the thermal load cases. In this work, we present a framework that couples the microstructure of the anode and cathode in the battery cell to the porous electrode model as popularized by Doyle, Fuller, and Newman. This porous electrode model informs a Thevenin type model that allows for calculating the average current split between different cells in a parallel cell group. The porous electrode model spatially mapped across every battery cell in a battery module allows for the estimation of the current split throughout individual cells in the module, as well as an estimate of the lithium plating criteria in the cell. A high level controller scheme is implemented to allow for real time switching between thermal control, lithium plating avoidance control, and infrastructure control. Various charging starting scenarios are studied, illustrating the interplay between temperature gradients and the battery module in the local anode potential in proximity to the thermodynamically favorable lithium plating conditions. Battery pack designers can utilize this framework to perform cooling studies and evaluate the impact of electrode design changes at the microstructure on fast charge performance in conditions that are more relevant to automotive load cases compared to the traditional isothermal simulations.
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BibTeX
@misc{garrick2026virtualizing,
title = {{Virtualizing Battery Module and Cell Performance Across Length Scales: From Microstructure to System}},
author = {Taylor R. Garrick and Hunter Teel and Jeffrey S. Lowe and Kevin Steinhouse and Brent Patterson and Samantha Jost and Sean T. Dix and Brandon MacLennan and Brian Koch and Jing Gao},
howpublished = {ECSarXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.1149/osf.io/jwa5v_v1},
url = {https://osf.io/preprints/ecsarxiv/jwa5v_v1/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Virtualizing Battery Module and Cell Performance Across Length Scales: From Microstructure to System
AU - Taylor R. Garrick
AU - Hunter Teel
AU - Jeffrey S. Lowe
AU - Kevin Steinhouse
AU - Brent Patterson
AU - Samantha Jost
AU - Sean T. Dix
AU - Brandon MacLennan
AU - Brian Koch
AU - Jing Gao
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/15
PB - ECSarXiv
DO - 10.1149/osf.io/jwa5v_v1
UR - https://osf.io/preprints/ecsarxiv/jwa5v_v1/
AB - As engineers continue to develop battery systems for electric vehicles, virtual engineering must be used to evaluate the performance of the battery pack under aggressive charging and the thermal load cases. In this work, we present a framework that couples the microstructure of the anode and cathode in the battery cell to the porous electrode model as popularized by Doyle, Fuller, and Newman. This porous electrode model informs a Thevenin type model that allows for calculating the average current split between different cells in a parallel cell group. The porous electrode model spatially mapped across every battery cell in a battery module allows for the estimation of the current split throughout individual cells in the module, as well as an estimate of the lithium plating criteria in the cell. A high level controller scheme is implemented to allow for real time switching between thermal control, lithium plating avoidance control, and infrastructure control. Various charging starting scenarios are studied, illustrating the interplay between temperature gradients and the battery module in the local anode potential in proximity to the thermodynamically favorable lithium plating conditions. Battery pack designers can utilize this framework to perform cooling studies and evaluate the impact of electrode design changes at the microstructure on fast charge performance in conditions that are more relevant to automotive load cases compared to the traditional isothermal simulations.
ER -