Those poor batteries never really stand a chance against Sandia researchers whose job is to test the cells beyond their limits.Get more news about Battery Heavy Impact Tester,you can vist our website!

And now, with a new indoor tower that allows battery-abuse researchers to drop 200 pounds or more on the outmatched lithium-ion cells, they’ve created yet another way to learn even more about how batteries respond to stress.

“This becomes our ninth way of killing a battery,” said Sandia battery-abuse testing engineer Chris Grosso. “It hits with so much force that so far, we are just chopping the batteries in half.”

Lithium-ion batteries are most commonly found in electric cars, computers, medical equipment and aircraft. And they are getting more powerful all the time. The constant push for more storage and power drives the need for tests such as those offered by the new drop tower, said Sandia mechanical engineer June Stanley.

“As far as we know, nobody in the U.S. has done any drop tests for impact testing like this,” June said. The data collected will aid industry in developing safer, more reliable batteries with more efficient performance. It will also help in responding to emergencies such as electric-vehicle crashes, she said.

“An impact test like this is more real world, more realistic to what would happen,” she said. “The test can give us a better understanding for first responders and how they handle an emergency. It can also be beneficial for industry researching and developing new technology.”

The drop tower looms inside a hangar-type building that easily can be vented and cleared if there’s smoke from a battery fire. Researchers control the tower remotely and watch the action on monitors inside a trailer parked about 30 yards away.

What they see is the drop tower reaching upward to just below the 14-foot ceiling. A battery sits in a steel tray bolted to a load cell to measure the impact force at the base of the tower as a weight of at least 200 pounds is perched above, at heights up to 8 feet, 8 inches.

The push of a button unleashes the weight. Gravity takes over, followed by a violent collision of weight onto battery. Wires connected to the battery and the tower measure speed, force, temperature and voltage. Cameras record the impact and resulting carnage. Data flashes to computers in the trailer.

So far, the team has tested single-cell lithium-ion batteries and a 12-pack of such batteries taped together. While the tests have not produced the sparks and heat that would occur in a slower-moving hydraulic crush test, they have generated useful data, June said.