AIS has been awarded first place in the Health and Safety category, and second place in Business Strategy and Growth, at the Regional EEF Future Manufacturing Awards.
With Li-ion batteries becoming more prevalent in everyday life, manufacturers begin to face a challenge: if abused, the batteries can undergo 'thermal runaway'; a fast, violent and self-accelerating chemical reaction which results in a release of gas and heat, causing temperatures to soar up to 1300°C which can destroy an entire battery within minutes.
The Research and Development Team at AIS seized this unmissable opportunity to capitalise on both their experience in passive fire protection and product development expertise and diversify into an emerging and constantly expanding market. Over the last 16 months, the AIS Automotive Team have been working to break into the Electric Vehicle (EV) market, and other relevant areas including grid storage.
Work began developing a passive fire protection product to protect an EV's battery pack from an external fire; this needed to be thin film, lightweight and flexible in order to cope with the vibrations from a vehicle, have strong 'weatherability', and be fast curing to allow use within a production line setting. Based on the requirements, AIS developed Q55EV, a sprayable intumescent paint, which has already gained serious interest from automotive OEMs for its fire protection performance.
Working with Jaguar Land Rover, developments are being made into products to prevent the propagation of thermal runaway of a single Li-ion battery cell into the adjacent cells within their vehicles' battery packs. AIS soon realised, to evolve these products, they would need to test and initiate battery failures, therefore, they began initiating thermal runaway within cells by penetrating them with a hydraulically controlled nail within their furnace.
Providing battery testing during the development of their products gives AIS opportunity to learn about our customer's challenges and create products that resolve these issues.
"The combination of materials development with testing has proven to be very powerful. It allows a rapid iteration of ideas and solutions, delivering progress that may previously have taken months in only a few weeks." [AIS Research and Development Manager, Simon Jones]
This hard work over the last year has resulted in funding from the Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC) to support Jaguar Land Rover in the design of their next generation battery, on a project called ASTIR - 'Advanced Technology into Reality'. This project, as part of a consortium of partners (including Siemens, AVL, and Warwick University), will provide matched funding for AIS to develop anti-propagation materials and products, and to grow their testing capability and facility.
Over the coming months, AIS are installing a containerised test facility within Unit E's yard that will greatly increase our testing capacity and consequently, the support we are able to offer our customers. With the addition of Jonathan Williams as Head of Battery Testing and Chris Fitzgibbon as Battery Test Facility Lead, both bringing a wealth of experience to the team, this promises to be an exciting new endeavour for AIS, so watch this space!