Altair, a global technology company providing solutions in product development, high-performance computing and data intelligence, is adding the CellMod Virtual Battery by Sendyne to the Altair Partner Alliance.

Improving battery system performance is critical to facilitating the projected global electric vehicle market growth. An accurate battery model is the starting point for battery pack design, system control and optimization.

The simple equivalent circuit (EC) models that are typically used today lack predictive power and are insufficient to the task. Taking a physics-based approach to simulating integrated systems that is accurate and runs faster than real-time can significantly improve the design of battery-based systems and optimize their long-term performance and safety.

CellMod is the first lithium-ion virtual battery capable of predicting cell and pack behavior, including thermal behavior, with an accuracy of better than 97% under a wide range of test conditions.

Utilizing a sophisticated electrochemical model, CellMod is packaged as a functional mock-up unit (FMU), allowing it to be easily integrated into most major simulation packages, such as Altair Activate, via the open industry standard functional mock-up interface (FMI).

The CellMod FMU accepts inputs including current, ambient temperature and time-step, and will output voltage, cell internal temperature, surface temperature, SOC and any other cell internal state variable. In addition, CellMod can simulate the behavior of aged cells and can be scaled to represent parallel and serial combinations of cells via Sendyne’s companion FMU BasicPackMod.

Unlike EC models, CellMod accounts for physical processes taking place inside the cells, including diffusion in solids, diffusion in electrolytic solutions, reaction kinetics, charge transport, heat transport, etc. Because of this, CellMod can predict battery cell behavior with a high degree of accuracy.

Sendyne has developed the first lithium-ion, virtual, physics-based battery model for real-time co-simulation. To support the growing market demand of electric vehicles, Altair is thrilled to introduce this new capability to Altair HyperWorks customers as more physics-based battery simulation is needed. Engineers will now have the ability to virtually test battery packs with higher degrees of accuracy in their design models for hardware and software in the loop, thermal simulation, online battery prediction and more.

—Richard Yen, SVP, global automotive and industry verticals team, Altair

The default battery model for CellMod is the Panasonic NCR18650A. This version may be used as a stand-in representing a generic lithium-ion battery—and still provide better accuracy than what is offered by an equivalent circuit model.

For design teams requiring a high level of accuracy (~97% or to the level of statistical variation) cell-specific versions that represent any type of lithium-ion cells, from NMC and LMO to LFP and NCA, and all iterations of these cells, can be quickly tailored.

Altair HyperWorks users can download CellMod FMU.

The APA offers on-demand access to a broad spectrum of software applications from more than 50 companies to Altair’s customers.