
Understand and Prevent Battery Fires and Explosions – and Avoid Costly Failures Like the Samsung Note 7
Modern batteries (eg Li-Ion) contain hazardous chemicals & they heat up during use: this combination always has the potential to cause fires & explosions. This presentation will focus on improving the understanding of how these incidents occur, what can be done to avoid them & how the risk can be minimized during early stage design.
The Samsung Note 7 phone & Boeing Dreamliner airplane fires are very costly examples of how even large corporations fail to understand the potential fire risk of batteries.
The solution lies in knowledge of heat generation rate during normal use & information about safe boundaries such as temperature, discharge rate & overcharge, in realistic situations that represent actual use conditions. Data from commercial batteries of different types will be used to illustrate these points.
A relatively new technique will also be discussed with data, which allows total heat output during discharge to be measured on-line and this can be used both for design and battery modelling. Examples of the data will be provided.
This webinar will focus on the following key topics:
• Why battery fires & explosions occur
• How to design safer batteries though understanding of heat generation
• Video evidence of batteries under explosive conditions
• How better thermal management systems can be designed – based on heat measurement from isothermal calorimetry
• Laboratory instruments suitable for testing and data generation
Presenter
Dr. Jasbir Singh – Managing Director at Hazard Evaluation Laboratory
Jasbir is a chemical engineer specializing in thermal hazards and calorimetry, traditionally for the chemical industry but now increasingly involved in battery safety, especially Li-ion EV and related types.
A graduate of Imperial College (London), where he undertook PhD into combustion and explosions, his experience includes many years in process design for the chemical and petrochemical industries. He is currently developing test methods and instruments for use in design of battery thermal management systems.
Buy Now

Battery Selection Tutorial Course 3/3: Integrating Your Battery Into Your Product – Designing for Worst-Case Scenarios
The last part in Exponent’s three-part series, this webinar will focus on the finished product from the viewpoint of the battery. How can you best protect your battery within your device? Is your battery going to be user-replaceable? If you’re creating multi-cell packs, how should they be separated from (yet still connected to) each other? Should a thermal event occur, how can you prevent that from cascading through the whole pack? This webinar will help to answer many of those questions, and discuss design questions to help safeguard your battery pack throughout its entire lifecycle.
This webinar will focus on the following key topics:
• Creating multi-cell packs
• Containing thermal runaway events
Presenter
Exponent – a multidisciplinary engineering and scientific consulting firm with significant experience in various aspects of battery design, safety testing and failure analysis.
Buy Now

Battery Selection Tutorial Course 2/3: Beyond the Standards: Device-Specific Testing
After choosing your cell and manufacturer (Part 1 of this series), most likely, they will have passed the tests of various standards organizations. However, depending on your operating environment, you may need to go above and beyond the baseline to ensure your product operates as intended. This webinar is Part 2 in a three-part series and will review a variety of factors to consider in your device-specific testing, including designing tests to predict the outcomes of various user-abuse scenarios, understanding the mechanisms of gas generation, capacity retention based on different voltage windows, and what happens if you need to cycle your cells outside of their operating range (outside in an Arizona summer or Minnesota winter, for example).
This webinar will focus on the following key topics:
• User-abuse scenarios to prevent against
• Causes and effects of various gas generation mechanisms
• Voltage limits
Presenter
Exponent – a multidisciplinary engineering and scientific consulting firm with significant experience in various aspects of battery design, safety testing and failure analysis.
Buy Now

The Potential Impact of a New U.S. Administration on Electric and Hybrid Vehicles
The impact of the election upon government policy & the automotive industry is complicated and unclear. Fuel economy regulations are in place through Model Year 2021. We will explore the potential impacts on Model Years 2022-25 & beyond including the Midterm Review & the California Zero Emission Vehicle regulations which become more stringent in 2018.
The strategies of the global automakers will be discussed including Volkswagen (as it attempts to recover from its diesel scandal) & the Detroit Three automakers that are focusing their expansion on markets outside North America. The role of China will also be assessed.
Technology improvements and their implication upon cost will also be discussed, as will the full impact of electrification (including 48 volt technology) on the vehicle fleet.
This webinar will focus on the following key topics:
• Potential Legislative & Regulatory Changes Affecting Manufacturers and Consumers
• Potential Responses by Industry & the New Administration to EPA Regulation for Model Years 2022-2025
• Potential Responses from NHTSA Which May Still Rule on 2022-2025 Period
• Reaction From California & the Impact of Its Zero Emission Vehicle Policies
• Impact of Automaker Strategies Which are Global
• Impact of Business & Technological Trends
Presenter
Alan Baum – Principal, Baum & Associates
Alan Baum formed Baum & Associates in August 2009. The company produces a detailed sales forecast and product life cycle for hybrid and electric vehicles. Baum has experience analyzing the impact of alternative fuel vehicles as well as advanced technologies in internal combustion engines that provide improved fuel economy. Since the 1980s, Baum has produced an automotive production forecast and detailed analysis of the automotive market. He has experience in the area of fuel economy and emissions regulation, the impact of fuel prices, & the market for hybrid and electric vehicles.
Buy Now