Grant: Alliance Grants

Development of a new battery casing for electric vehicles using 3D printing The NSERC/General Electric/Dyze Design Alliance grant, in development of a new battery casing for electric vehicles using 3D printing, is to be held by Polytechnique Montréal professor Étienne Martin. The grant will focus on the development of two types of numerical tools to aid in the design of components manufactured using binder jet additive manufacturing and filament deposition modelling. These tools will be used to develop novel designs for battery casings to be used in electric vehicles for our industrial partners. The first numerical tool is a sintering compensation tool, which will allow prediction of the final sintered geometries from the print geometries. The second tool includes optimization frameworks, which will enable the design of components such as battery casings using artificial intelligence, applied to the unconstrained design space facilitated by additive manufacturing (AM). The outcomes of this project will allow Canadian manufacturers to produce new AM parts, which are lighter and possess additional functionalities. The design and production of these parts will allow Canada to be at the forefront of AM production. The development of electric vehicle battery casings with integrated cooling systems will enable increased range and reliability of operational electric vehicles in Canada. This project is aligned with the 2014 Canadian Science and Technology Strategy for the application of AM and reduction of green house gas emissions, which is a goal of the transportation industry.