It’s good to have a great car or technological equipment, but it’s simple to forget that safety can make the difference between enjoying new technology and suffering (or dying from it). Few things can ruin the remainder of your day more quickly than having a device explode in your face or an electric vehicle catch fire.
Fortunately, the Battery Enclosure Thermal Runaway (BETR) evaluation, the first material screening test method at UL Solutions to assess electric vehicle (EV) battery enclosure material, was just announced by UL (a well-known electronics safety testing company). The UL Standards and Engagement division released the UL 2596, Test Method for Thermal and Mechanical Performance of Battery Enclosure Materials, standard on January 27, 2022.
According to Eric Bulington, director of product management in the Engineered Materials group of UL Solutions, thermal runaway has become a crucial safety issue in the automobile sector and has increased emphasis about how the best enclosure material is employed for thermal runaway protection. With this service, we are assisting manufacturers in overcoming one of the most difficult obstacles facing the e-Mobility sector while also satisfying consumer demand for cutting-edge and reliable automotive products.
A thermal runaway test is used by UL Solutions to assess the performance of materials. The full battery system is used to test material plaques, saving resin producers and material suppliers both time and money. In order to supply original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) with solutions that meet their objectives and to assess the performance of materials, producers need to have access to a wide range of possibilities.
It is appropriate that we carry on this tradition with EV batteries because UL Solutions has a long history of thought leadership with regard to batteries of all types and sizes, according to Bulington. By supplying testing and advising solutions to meet various standards and requirements to automotive OEMs, suppliers, and makers of automotive components and systems, UL Solutions addresses industry challenges.
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT The representatives for UL made this sound far less intriguing than it actually is. In contrast to typical safety tests, they purposely cause the batteries to catch fire. This is beneficial because they want to ensure that the battery’s outside casing can prevent injuries to people in the case of a thermal runaway event (aka a battery fire).
Fires caused by lithium batteries are especially hazardous because they can rekindle after being extinguished. This explains why electric car fires continue to burn long after they have been put out in the news. With the new BETR exam, the objective is to ensure that no one is wounded while handling the situation, rather than to prevent these intense, challenging fires.
Battery fires in electronics happen more frequently than most people realize. Many reports of cell phones catching fire or airplanes having in-flight emergencies due to someone’s device catching fire or smoking can be found by performing a basic Google search. Making these occurrences even slightly safer can have a significant impact.
US Forest Service provided the featured image.
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