A team at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory has created a toolset that they say will aid designers of safe, high-performance batteries for electric vehicles. The software is known as Virtual Integrated Battery Environment (VIBE) and may be downloaded here.

Schematic for the overall vision of how VIBE works. Source: IHSThe Oak Ridge team, led by Sreekanth Pannala and John Turner, created a software that simulates key battery performance indicators, including charge and thermal transport, electrochemical reactions and battery mechanical stress.

Researchers say this capability will accelerate the design and research process for industry, national laboratory and academic users.

“We developed integrated tools so that one doesn't have to employ different performance models for different applications," Pannala says.

The software was developed as part of the Computer-Aided Engineering for Battery (CAEBAT) program.