Intergation of a crashworthy battery in a fully electric city bus

Beschreibung

Research on the safety of fully electric vehicle becomes more and more important in recent years.. Starting from the safety aspects of hybrid vehicles, more and more focus is placed on fully electric vehicles. This paper focuses on a novel concept for a fully electric city bus and the crashworthy integration of changeable batteries. The fully electric city bus under study is operated in regular service. The driving profile was evaluated and scenarios for crash hazards were defined. Considering most recent safety measures and draft test procedures the main issues for a crashworthy integration of the battery were derived. The steady operation of the city busses all over the day requires a changeable battery system as a trade-off between battery weight and payload. Up to three reloading cycles are used to provide the energy for the all day operation. The changeable battery pack had to be located at an easily accessible and safe position, while still providing the ground-clearance of a low-floor vehiclefor easy access and space for a wheelchair. Therefore two approaches were analysed in greater detail. One having the battery in the front area ahead of the firewall and a second concept having the battery pack located under floor. Analysis of the frontal battery location calls for reinforcements in order to guarantee sufficient safety in frontal impacts. The position under the floor is less critical but requires a slim battery compartment for a low-floor vehicle. Since being the more promising concept, the housing was designed and crash analysis performed for the under-floor approach. Experimental testing focused on the stability of the selected lithium-ion cells under crash conditions as well as battery modules. Two different sizes of fully electric city buses were built using the crashworthy battery integration. The two vehicles run for a two year period in a field operational test. This study was performed within the project "Klimamobil - Local traffic with zero-emission vehicles" funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology under the "A3 - Austrian Advanced Automotive Technology" program.

Zeitraum	22 Sept. 2010 → 24 Sept. 2010
Ereignistitel	Konferenz Washington, USA; Advanced Vehicle and Propulsion Systems
Veranstaltungstyp	Sonstiges
Bekanntheitsgrad	International