Modeling capacity fade in lithium-ion cells

Battery life is an important, yet technically challenging, issue for battery development and application. Adequately estimating battery life requires a significant amount of testing and modeling effort to validate the results. Integrated battery testing and modeling is quite feasible today to simulate battery performance, and therefore applicable to predict its life. A relatively simple equivalent-circuit model (ECM) is used in this work to show that such an integrated approach can actually lead to a high-fidelity simulation of a lithium-ion cell's performance and life. The methodology to model the cell's capacity fade during thermal aging is described to illustrate its applicability to battery calendar life prediction.