Electrochemical modelling of Li-ion battery pack with constant voltage cycling

In a battery pack, cell-to-cell chemical variation, or the variation in operating conditions, can possibly lead to current imbalance which can accelerate pack ageing. In this paper, the Pseudo-Two-Dimensional(P2D) porous electrode model is extended to a battery pack layout, to predict the overall behaviour and the cell-to-cell variation under constant voltage charging and discharging. The algorithm used in this model offers the flexibility in extending the layout to any number of cells in a pack, which can be of different capacities, chemical characteristics and physical dimensions. The coupled electro-thermal effects such as differential cell ageing, temperature variation, porosity change and their effects on the performance of the pack, can be predicted using this modelling algorithm. The pack charging voltage is found to have an impact on the performance as well as the SEI layer growth. Numerical studies are conducted by keeping the cells at different thermal conditions and the results show the necessity to increase the heat transfer coefficient to cool the pack, compared to single cell. The results show that the thermal imbalance has more impact than the change in inter-connecting resistance on the split current distribution, which accelerates the irreversible porous filling and ageing.