Modeling and Simulation of Thermal Effects on Electrical Behavior
in Lithium-Ion Cells
Crist
´
obal E. Allendes
1
, Ammi Beltr
´
an
2
, Jorge E. Garc
´
ıa Bustos
3
, Diego Troncoso-Kurtovic
4
, Bruno Masserano
5
, Benjam
´
ın
Brito Schiele
6
, Violeta Rivera
7
, Francisco Jaramillo
8
, Marcos E. Orchard
9
, Jorge F. Silva
10
, Heraldo Rozas
11
and Srikanth
Rangarajan
12
1,2,3,5,6,7,11
Department of Electrical Engineering, Universidad de Chile, 8370456 Santiago, Chile
cristobal.allendes@ug.uchile.cl
ammi.beltran@ug.uchile.cl
jorgegarcia@ug.uchile.cl
bruno.masserano@ug.uchile.cl
benjamin.brito@ug.uchile.cl
violeta.rivera@ug.uchile.cl
heraldo.rozas@ug.uchile.cl
1,3,4,5,6,8,9,10
Center for Sustainable Acceleration of Electromobility - CASE, Universidad de Chile, 8370456 Santiago, Chile
diego.troncoso.k@ug.uchile.cl
francisco.jaramillo@ing.uchile.cl
morchard@u.uchile.cl
josilva@ing.uchile.cl
12
Binghamton University, Binghamton, New York, 13901, United States of America
srangar@binghamton.edu
ABSTRACT
Thermal effects exert a crucial influence on the electrical be-
havior of lithium-ion batteries, significantly impacting key
parameters such as the open circuit voltage curve, internal
impedance, and cell degradation rate. Furthermore, these ef-
fects may give rise to electrolyte loss, resulting in a reduc-
tion in capacity. The cycling of batteries inherently generates
internal heat, establishing a direct relationship between cell
temperature and power demand. This article aims to pro-
vide a methodology to model electrothermal relations and
temperature influence on electrical behavior in lithium-ion
cells, as well as a simulation of extended cell operation un-
der arbitrary power loads, presenting a novel approach not
previously explored. It does this by considering three mod-
els: the Bernardi model for heat generation within the cell,
a thermal lumped model for the cell’s temperature, and the
Vogel-Fulcher-Tammann model for the capacity change as a
function of temperature. These models are then connected to
a state-of-the-art open circuit voltage model of a cell, provid-
Crist
´
obal E. Allendes et al. This is an open-access article distributed un-
der the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States Li-
cense, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any
medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
ing a connection from the thermal world back into the electri-
cal world. Experiments with different power demands occur
on the simulation, including estimation of thermal parame-
ters with relative errors under 1 %, visualizing the effects of
the integrated models and potential for real-cell applications.
1. INTRODUCTION
When designing lithium-ion battery systems, temperature and
heat generation are critical factors that influence the electric
behavior. These changes in how a cell behaves subsequently
affect the degradation and efficiency of battery energy stor-
age systems (Spitthoff, Shearing, & Burheim, 2021). Also,
extreme temperatures significantly increase the degradation
processes (Hou, Yang, Wang, & Zhang, 2020), with the cell’s
internal heat generation and the environment’s impact on heat
release influencing these processes. The connection of these
effects thus creates a complex interdependence between ther-
mal and electrical phenomena.
The degradation of lithium-ion batteries significantly impacts
their thermal and electrical characteristics. Various method-
ologies have been proposed to assess this degradation, which
depend on factors such as the amount of available data, ac-
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