Success Story : Provided Automated Electrical Testing Solution for the Incoming Quality Control of Lithium-ion Batteries for Space Application

The Customer

Battery safety and thermal management technologies supplier

The Challenges

• Provide a battery electrical test system with manual and automatic test modes

• Provide a battery electrical test system with multiple safety protection mechanisms 

• The battery electrical test system must comply with NASA JSC EP-WI 37A specification

The Solution

1. Battery Reliability Test System 17010

2. Probing System 17010-K003

Results

Provided customers with a battery electrical test system that complies with NASA JSC EP-WI 37A specifications, has multiple safety protection mechanisms, and can easily switch between manual and automatic test modes.

In the past 10 years, lithium-ion batteries have fully demonstrated their advantages of high energy density, high volume density, and long life, and are widely used in aerospace systems, such as satellites, space stations, and mobile vehicles. Due to the remote locations in space, when a battery pack fails, the task of replacing the battery is at best complex, if not impossible. Therefore, aerospace batteries need to be subjected to rigorous and precise testing for quality control and storage to ensure their reliability, as faulty batteries can render the complete space system inoperable.

Based on the customer's requirements for automated battery testing, CHROMA integrated the 17010 HighPrecision Battery Reliability Test System and the Chroma Probing System through the Chroma OCV & DCIR ATS test platform to form a High-Precision Automated Battery Cell Electrical Test System. This system was designed to independently perform Open-Circuit Voltage (OCV), Direct Current Internal Resistance (DCIR), and Capacity measurement manually, or controlled by third-party data acquisition and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system integration, through communication with the Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) of robots, resulting in a completely automated Space Qualification Test Solution.

Safety is an essential consideration for automated testing of lithium-ion batteries. The Chroma Probing System incorporated multiple safety features, including battery tray position detection, smoke detection, foreign object intrusion detection, tower temperature monitoring, compressed air monitoring, utility power monitoring, and control/distribution for external fire extinguishing equipment. The system safety protection mechanism is to classify the hazard level into three levels, and the system will activate the appropriate protection mechanism according to the different hazard levels to reduce the damage level.

In order to meet the NASA JSC EP-WI 37A battery cell screening specification, Chroma employed the 17010 High-Precision Battery Reliability Test System, which has a voltage measurement accuracy of ±0.015% of F.S., current accuracy of ±0.02% of F.S. and has 18Bit ADC measurement resolution. In addition, the Chroma 17010 system has a built-in contact check circuit, which ensures the contact quality between the precision probe and the battery before starting the test, avoiding test hazards caused by deficient contact. During the test, to avoid test errors caused by the heat generated by the battery, Chroma’s solution was equipped with high-efficiency fan modules in the probing system, which brought cold air into the system and discharged the heat generated by the battery, creating a good convection environment inside the probing system. During the design process, the Chroma team used heat flow simulation software to calculate the heat output of the battery and the cold air flow required for the heat removal capacity of the probing system and ensured the design of the probing system complied with the EPWI 37A battery cell screening specification.

Figure 1: Battery Reliability Test System 17010

Figure 2: Automated Battery Cell Electrical Test System 

Figure 3: Probing System 17010-K003