PowerShield: An Ultra-Safe Enclosure with Thin Walls for Shipboard High-Energy Density Devices

The Navy has been evaluating the deployment of directed energy weapons and all-electric ship technologies, both requiring massive on-board power capabilities. Lithium ion batteries are part of this next generation power systems but high visibility failures have highlighted the need to design packaging as an integral part of a holistic system using a survivability mindset to offer improved countermeasures to a sudden, uncontrolled release of stored energy.  Pyrocarr is proposing to continue the development and commercialization of an ultra-safe battery enclosure developed under an earlier SBIR Phase II project. The proposed enclosure features very thin yet high-performing walls for containment of all battery failure effects. Enclosure prototypes passed numerous tests already, including heat flux, smoke, fire and deflagration containment, kinetic impact and large Li-ion battery failures. In this Phase I project, the enclosure design will be modeled thermally and structurally to further analyze its design. A new enclosure will be built leveraging earlier work. Battery failure tests will be conducted in this new enclosure to validate the new assembly. This work will lay the groundwork for full-scale fabrication and qualification testing in Phase II.