Adaption of the TRIZ Method to the Development of Electric Energy Storage Systems

The increasing competition in the automobile industry leads to intensified development activities regarding the next innovations of hybrid and electric vehicle technologies with acceptable costs, reduced weight and commonality. A survey carried out in the field of the automobile industry working on the electrification of drive trains analyzed the specific use of design methods. The industry survey revealed shortcomings in the industrial utilization of design methods which hinder their application and understanding. Besides the need for improved comprehension and a better balance between preparation and output, a lack of direct reference to the technical design task was observed.A development project in a product generation development was accompanied with creativity workshops to specify the designers’ needs. Therefore parts of the TRIZ (theory of inventive problem solving) concepts were chosen to stimulate new solutions. The goal of the presented approach was to facilitate the application of the inventive principles in this product generation development by customizing to the technological circumstances of electric energy storage systems (EESS).The basis of the used approach was a patent search involving 150 patents (and patent applications) in the EESS field. These patents were selected by relevance for e.g. design of the battery's mechanical structure, cooling, electric contacting or assembly. Each of these patents was analyzed in detail regarding the used inventive principles and the technical contradictions solved thereby. After aggregating all identified combinations into an EESS specific contradiction matrix, this matrix was compared to Altshuller's matrix to evaluate the success rate of the given principles in these matrices for solving high voltage battery specific problems. The main result is a ranking of the most used inventive principles in this field. The benefits of the patents were moreover evaluated considering costs, lightweight and production. Hence, it was possible to create particular matrices and rankings for design tasks in these contexts. A first testing of these outcomes showed positive effects on the generated ideas and on the designers’ comprehension. This design practice is focusing on the EESS and needs to be conducted and validated for further applications.