Scaling Relations for Intercalation Induced Damage in Electrodes

Mechanical degradation, owing to intercalation induced stress and microcrack formation, is a key contributor to the electrode performance decay in lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). The stress generation and formation of microcracks are caused by the solid state diffusion of lithium in the active particles. In this work, scaling relations are constructed for diffusion induced damage in intercalation electrodes based on an extensive set of numerical experiments with a particle-level description of microcrack formation under disparate operating and cycling conditions, such as temperature, particle size, C-rate, and drive cycle. The microcrack formation and evolution in active particles is simulated based on a stochastic methodology. A reduced order scaling law is constructed based on an extensive set of data from the numerical experiments. The scaling relations include combinatorial constructs of concentration gradient, cumulative strain energy, and microcrack formation. The reduced order relations are further employed to study the influence of mechanical degradation on cell performance and validated against the high order model for the case of damage evolution during variable current vehicle drive cycle profiles.