Grant: Alliance Grants

Economic and environmental incentives impose a strong pressure to decrease the carbon footprint of transport in general. In the aerospace and ground transport industries, electrification of propulsion and reduction of vehicle weight by replacing metallic parts with polymer matrix composites (PMCs) are the spearheads of this effort. Our project focuses on lithium-based batteries and complex carbon-fiber epoxy composite structures featuring metallic inserts. Both materials are increasingly used in aerospace vehicles, and fire resistance issues need to be addressed to ensure that the safety of the occupants is not compromised by this technological shift. Novel simulation tools and approaches are needed as current practice can lead to unsuccessful certification testing, resulting in long and expensive development cycles. For the problem tackled in our project, this means better characterizing the properties and risks associated with battery fires while simultaneously improving numerical simulations to provide predictive capabilities for ignition and interactions between flames and combustible walls, while training 16 highly qualified personnel. Through our partnership, we will develop such advanced numerical simulation tools increasing the understanding of fire resistance, for both lithium-based batteries and PMCs. Simple experiments will be used to obtain the fundamental quantities needed for model development, such as the reactivities of the materials in the solid phase and the composition of the outgassing emitted upon thermal degradation. The models will be validated against experimental data obtained using realistic flames. Our models will quantify the hazard posed by lithium battery packs, as well as provide predictive capabilities for the fire resistance of composite structures and the performance of fireproofing solutions.