Environmental Tests and Evaluations of Variable 18650 Cylindrical Li-Ion Cells for Space Cell's Qualification Establishment

Numerous Li-Ion cell manufacturers currently have currently produced all different kinds of 18650 cylindrical Li-Ion cells with a purpose of operating source of electric powered application such as electric vehicle (EV), hybrid electric vehicle (HEV), and small-scale energy storage system (ESS). In general, for achieving the efficient and stable operation of above applications, each cell qualification procedure based on several environmental and performance tests has been established. Unfortunately, there are little researches that applies cell qualification procedure for space application such as satellite and launch vehicle. Among them, it has been more required to design high-power Li-Ion series/parallel-cell configured battery pack based on cell qualification for reliable and safe launching. Therefore, this research aims to carry out two environmental tests and evaluates their experimental results through variable 18650 cylindrical Li-Ion cells in order to establish the space cell's qualification. From two tests of vibration and shock tests previously implemented, it is possible to compare the discharge capacities and internal resistances before and after. These results sufficiently suggest that an operational performance on launch vehicle is absolutely dependent on its environmental conditions of vibration and shock. Consequently, it can be surely expected to provide the basic knowledge of cell's optimal selection and the configuration guideline of battery pack through cell qualification for launch vehicle. This research has been elaborately validated by experimental results of four high-power Li-Ion cells such as two NCA (Li[NiCoAl]O-2) cells and two NMC (Li[NiMnCo]O-2) cells.