A coupled phase field formulation for modelling fatigue cracking in lithium-ion battery electrode particles
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Published version
Author(s)
Ai, Weilong
Wu, Billy
Martínez-Pañeda, E
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Electrode particle cracking is one of the main phenomena driving battery capacity degradation. Recent phase field fracture studies have investigated particle cracking behaviour. However, only the beginning of life has been considered and effects such as damage accumulation have been neglected. Here, a multi-physics phase field fatigue model has been developed to study crack propagation in battery electrode particles undergoing hundreds of cycles. In addition, we couple our electrochemo-mechanical formulation with X-ray CT imaging to simulate fatigue cracking of realistic particle microstructures. Using this modelling framework, non-linear crack propagation behaviour is predicted, leading to the observation of an exponential increase in cracked area with cycle number. Three stages of crack growth (slow, accelerating and unstable) are observed, with phenomena such as crack initialisation at concave regions and crack coalescence having a significant contribution to the resulting fatigue crack growth rates. The critical values of C-rate, particle size and initial crack length are determined, and found to be lower than those reported in the literature using static fracture models. Therefore, this work demonstrates the importance of considering fatigue damage in battery degradation models and provides insights on the control of fatigue crack propagation to alleviate battery capacity degradation.
Date Issued
2022-10-01
Date Acceptance
2022-06-25
Citation
Journal of Power Sources, 2022, 544
ISSN
0378-7753
Publisher
Elsevier
Journal / Book Title
Journal of Power Sources
Volume
544
Copyright Statement
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
License URL
Sponsor
Medical Research Council (MRC)
Identifier
http://arxiv.org/abs/2206.12727v1
Grant Number
MR/V024124/1
Subjects
physics.chem-ph
physics.chem-ph
cond-mat.mtrl-sci
cs.CE
physics.app-ph
Article Number
ARTN 231805
Date Publish Online
2022-07-23