A Battery Management and Control System using a Universal Reconfigurable Architecture for Extended Health of Batteries in Hybrid and/or All-Electric Propulsion Systems

NASA seeks intelligent monitoring for hybrid and/or all electric propulsion systems, as well as methods to significantly extend the life of electric aircraft propulsion energy sources. Lithium-based batteries will continue to play a key role as an electric propulsion source due to their high energy and power densities. However, the requirement to advance towards more fuel efficient and environmentally friendly aircrafts demands battery systems that can operate for longer periods of time in a safer and more reliable manner. Efforts within the commercial aviation sector also indicate strong interest in this area. As an example, Boeing is developing hybrid airplanes as part of the Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft project funded by NASA, and has also developed the first hybrid electric airplane in cooperation with Cambridge University. On the battery monitoring and control area, focus has been mostly aimed at achieving accurate and stable long-term estimation of cell State of Charge, State of Health, and Remaining Useful Life. These efforts have achieved excellent progress, and accuracies below 3% error are common today. We propose a new universal architecture that intelligently utilizes this estimated information and turns it into tangible actions to satisfy application demands while simultaneously improving on battery's health/life performance.