STATIC TESTING of EV components

Firing nails into your latest Li-ion battery pack is but one of many regimens in the comprehensive testing of new electric vehicles.

The market for electric vehicles (EVs) continues to grow. To offset the immense weight of their batteries, a heightened focus has been put on lightweighting, which has brought many new materials and components into the global automotive supply chain. These components and assemblies, including polymer films used for Li-ion battery cell separators and the packs they ultimately form, require development and production quality testing to verify their mechanical properties.

One of the methodologies, static mechanical testing, is commonly performed by universal testing machines operated within manufacturing and research labs. Put simply, universal testing machines are designed to hold a test specimen and subject it to tensile (pull) or compression (push) forces by moving the machine's crosshead up or down. Transducers, such as a load cell, capture valuable data that allows labs to analyze the physical properties of the test specimen for quality checks or exploratory work.