Driving Electrification! Battery housings for the future
Together with a leading TIER1 automotive supplier you can become a pioneer and tackle one of the main challenges of the automotive industry.
Its up to you: Can you come up with innovative ideas and approaches
to optimize current battery housings?
✅ Completed 🏁 Winner Congrats to Pingala, RoyalMech and Leyden Jar, great effort!
🏆 Prize €15.000 + further cooperation opportunities
Submission Template
Always remember to choose a path and thus a type of battery cooling before you start your design - more information can be found here.
During the qualification phase, the goal is to identify the most promising approaches and visionaries/visions.
To participate, you have to choose only one of the tracks you want to focus at and submit the submission template you can find below!
The submission template is mandatory to participate.
Download: Submission Template
Fill in the questions describing which innovative solution you have developed for this problem to create an optimized battery housing.
To really highlight your ideas and bring your point across better, we would advise you to also include some further documents like a more detailed concept, videos, sketches, explanations or references to important components and materials.
For further guidance on your concept, take a look at the Key Questions listed down below.
Key Questions
The task in the qualification phase is to bring your idea to the point in a concise way. You should guide your work and your ideation process with the following key questions:
General considerations
Take a look a current solution for battery housings. Why is your design superior to the existing ones?
Which materials are used for this lightweight battery housing and why are these materials suitable for it?
If several materials are used how are they joined to guarantee tightness of the battery housing? What problems can occur when using certain material combinations – e.g. corrosion – and how can we overcome them?
How are these materials processed (e.g. casted, extruded) and what are typical tolerances in these processes?
What happens during a crash? Are the battery cells save with your design? Think about required properties at different areas.
Track 1: Tightness
Within this track you should design a battery concept where you work out a detailed tightness concept of the battery housing. Keep in mind that the battery housing has to be opened and closed during its lifetime for maintenance and repair. If you choose different materials the battery housing has to be also tight in the joint areas
Which kind of joint do you use which is tight, easy to open and close again and is at the same time lightweight? Where do you open the battery housing if a cell has to be exchanged?
What innovative possibilities can be used for a sealing and how does the surface quality of the chosen materials influence the sealing? Do they have to be machined, coated to guarantee a good sealing?
How do you guarantee the housing is tight before and afterwards?
Track 2: Repair & Maintenance
To maintain a battery housing or to repair the cells within the battery housing it has to opened and closed ~ 10 times during its lifetime. Conventional car garages should be able to dismount the battery housing from the chassis, open the housing, do maintenance work battery and close the housing again to mount it to the car again. Develop a battery housing that fulfills the requirements for this tasks
Describe the journey for repair and maintenance of the battery by a mechanic:
Which work is performed directly in the car garage and which works in a special facility?
Do the battery housings have to be treated in a certain way?
How does the exact the journey from the removal and opening of the housing up to the resealing look like?
What are the challenges that can arise during this procedure and how could your design of the battery housing help to optimize the repair and maintenance journey and especially the opening and reclosing process?
Which test procedures are suitable, efficient and reliable to determine the tightness of the battery housing?
Track 3: Sustainability
Be creative! Find a sustainable design concept for a battery housing. Think about the manufacturing of the battery housing, the lifetime, second life and recycling.
In what other sections or areas could the battery of a BEV or the battery case itself be reused? What are specific applications and what requirements can be derived for the design of a battery case?
How can individual parts or components of the housing be recycled or used in other industries or branches?
Which materials and characteristics should the battery housing have to be dismantled and dissembled sustainably and why are your selected materials suitable for this? Does a multi-material solution generate problems?
Additional question: Can a battery housing generate its own energy?
Desired Deliverables
Qualification phase
The development of your first results in the qualification phase can have the following features:
· Drawings (3D optional)
· Material concept with focus on lightweight
· Manufacturing of the battery housing (process flow and joining concept)
· Benefits with respect to current solutions
Track-specific:
· Car garage survey
· Tempering concept (Path 2 tempering – see Background information)
Elaboration phase
During the elaboration phase you will work together with the clients experts and have access to special know-how and processes. Together you will work on:
· Prototype (Additive manufactured)
· crash simulation