Nico­las Damay, lec­tur­er, works at the UTC Rober­val lab­o­ra­to­ry. Khadi­ja El Kadri Benkara, a research sci­en­tist in the same lab­o­ra­to­ry, is respon­si­ble for all elec­tri­cal ener­gy research plat­forms. Their research focus­es on opti­miz­ing the life and per­for­mance of elec­tric batteries.

While chemists are respon­si­ble for the devel­op­ment of new mate­ri­als and the cre­ation of high-per­for­mance bat­tery cells, the prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with their con­trol in sys­tems fall more with­in the remit of elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing. This means con­trol­ling elec­tri­cal and ther­mal (or even mechan­i­cal) behav­iour, while at the same time gain­ing access to infor­ma­tion lim­it­ed by onboard sensors.

Already proud of its rec­og­nized exper­tise in elec­tri­cal machines, the team turned their atten­tion to bat­ter­ies in the ear­ly 2000s, under the lead­er­ship of Christophe Forgez. In the field of elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing, this ranges from bat­tery siz­ing to bat­tery con­trol, based on mul­ti-phys­i­cal mod­el­ling. The team’s sci­en­tif­ic approach is to bet­ter under­stand elec­tro­chem­i­cal and ther­mal phe­nom­e­na, sub­se­quent­ly tran­scribed into cou­pled mod­els known as “dig­i­tal twins”. “These tools are eas­i­er to manip­u­late than phys­i­cal objects and will enable col­leagues to work on opti­miz­ing design or con­trol, with effi­cien­cy objec­tives in terms of mass reduc­tion and dura­bil­i­ty, for exam­ple”, explains Nico­las Damay.

In their research activ­i­ties, the team mem­bers place great val­ue on using an exper­i­men­tal approach to enrich and val­i­date its mod­els. This is done with a view to meet­ing and resolv­ing tech­no­log­i­cal and indus­tri­al chal­lenges. Hence the devel­op­ment of var­i­ous research plat­forms. “These plat­forms cov­er the entire pow­er­train chain, from the bat­tery to the elec­tric machine, includ­ing pow­er con­vert­ers. Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, my research focus­es on the design and mul­ti-physics mod­el­ling of on-board ener­gy con­ver­sion devices. More specif­i­cal­ly, I’m cur­rent­ly super­vis­ing a the­sis ded­i­cat­ed to the ther­mal para­me­ters of bat­ter­ies”, adds Khadi­ja El Kadri Benkara.

It turns out that bat­tery tem­per­a­ture is the pri­ma­ry fac­tor influ­enc­ing age­ing. “Tem­per­a­ture also pos­es a safe­ty prob­lem. Hence the impor­tance of mea­sur­ing the heat gen­er­at­ed by the bat­tery, which can be pre­cise­ly deter­mined using calorime­try,” adds Khadi­ja El Kadri Benkara.

UTC’s rec­og­nized exper­tise in this field enabled her to join the HIPOBAT (High Pow­er Bat­ter­ies) project, which brings togeth­er six French and six Ger­man lab­o­ra­to­ries to devel­op high-pow­er “all-sol­id state” bat­ter­ies for rapid charg­ing and dis­charg­ing. “It’s a mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary, mul­ti­scale project. Research will focus on new bat­tery tech­nolo­gies, par­tic­u­lar­ly those based on sodi­um-ion. This choice is moti­vat­ed by a desire for sov­er­eign­ty — sodi­um can be extract­ed from sea­wa­ter — but also by envi­ron­men­tal impact”, explains Nico­las Damay.

MSD