PhD Position: Failure analysis in forming of battery cans

Are you fascinated to develop the most sophisticated simulation techniques for production of battery cans? Do you want to do scientific research with immediate industrial relevance?

For this project, we are looking for a 4-year PhD candidate to reinforce our team.

With the steep rise in sales of electrical vehicles the demand for batteries is growing rapidly. One of the battery technologies is to build the battery pack from cylindrical cells. The battery casing (the so-called battery can) is typically manufactured from steel by deep drawing and wall ironing. This forming process is very critical due to extreme deformations under high surface pressure, friction and temperature variation.

The process is complicated further by the unavoidable anisotropy of the steel sheet, that is reinforced by the large deformations. Under the high surface pressures, forming dies cannot be considered rigid anymore and friction coefficients are no longer constant. Standard simulation tools for sheet forming are therefore not applicable and new models must be developed.

Sometimes the battery cans split during production and currently the cause for this is not well understood. The scientific hypothesis is that material anisotropy plays an important role. The overall objective of this research is to be able to quantify the effect of anisotropy in the sheet material on this failure in battery can production and to optimise process and/or material parameters to minimise probability of failure.

For this project, we are looking for a PhD candidate with relevant expertise at the crossroads of computational mechanics, materials science and production technology. The candidate will report his/her research during bi-weekly meetings of our research group and quarterly meetings with the project partners. The candidate is expected to present his/her results at international scientific conferences and publish them in academic literature. Furthermore, the researcher will be encouraged to tutor MSc students who do their final assignment on sub-projects pertaining to the current research project.

The PhD research will be performed in the chair of Nonlinear Solid Mechanics in close cooperation with the Materials innovation institute M2i and Tata Steel R&D in The Netherlands