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Mechanics of Energy Storage Materials: Swelling and Fracturing in Lithium ion Batteries electrodes during Charging/Discharging Cycles (LiSF)
Start date: Apr 29, 2013, End date: Aug 28, 2014 PROJECT  FINISHED 

One of the greatest challenges facing the electric power industry is how to deliver the energy in a useable form as a higher-value product, especially in the area of renewable energy. By storing the power produced from immense renewable sources off-peak (e.g., daytime for solar energy) and releasing it during on-peak periods, energy storage can transform low-value, unscheduled power into high-value “green” products.The development of high-energy and high-power storage devices has been one of the research areas of top-most importance in recent years. Lithium batteries currently have the highest energy storage density of any rechargeable battery technology. Their behavior is based on the classical intercalation reaction during which lithium is inserted into or extracted from both cathode and anode. Huge volume changes are associated with this process, often resulting in disintegration of the material.Exploration of nanostructure is one of the encouraging research directions in order to avoid materials failure. Experiments suggest that size reduction is an effective strategy in creating fracture resistant electrodes.Using a combination of diffusion kinetics available in the literature and fracture mechanics, the first part of project aims at giving insights on the critical size for flaw tolerant nano-structured battery electrodes. Approximated analysis of crack coalescence and debonding at the interface between active particles and porous electrodes will be achieved by means of new ad-hoc multi-physics cohesive interfaces.Since effects at different scales are involved during charge/discharge cycles, the simulation of the mechanical response of Li-Battery systems requires a multi-scale approach. The second part of the project aims at enriching current computational homogenization techniques - originally developed in the framework of elasticity for heterogeneous materials - as a tool to model the electrochemical-mechanical interactions in lithium batteries.
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