An Experiment and Simulation Study on Failure of High Voltage Cables under Indentation

Failure of high voltage cables (HVCs) which sometimes occurs in electric vehicle collision is one of the fuses that leads to severe thermal runaway of the traction battery system, which has not gotten thorough investigations. This paper presents an experiment and simulation study on the failure behaviors of HVCs under indentation loadings. Tests were performed with different combinations of indenter (cylinder indenter with a diameter of 5 mm which was labeled as D5, cylinder indenter with a diameter of 15 mm which was labeled as D15 and wedge indenter with an angle of 60° which was labeled as V60) and loading speed (1.5 mm/min for quasi-static and 2m/s for dynamic). Experimental results indicated that the failure behavior of HVCs was both influenced by the indenter shape and loading speeds. Sharp indenter will led to a component failure sequence from outmost to innermost. For quasi-static loading, the peak force was 14.4 kN, 26.0 kN and 3.8 kN respectively for D5, D15 and V60 indentation, and the corresponding failure displacement was 10.7 mm, 10.5 mm and 9.8 mm. For dynamic loading, considerable force enhancement was discovered, and the failure displacements were advanced to 8.9 mm, 8.1 mm and 8.3 mm respectively for these three indenters. Using the indentation test results, a homogenized finite element model was developed for HVC. Force responses from simulation were comparable with their counterparts from experiment for all the loading conditions, proving the accuracy of this model and the possibility of using this model to improve the crash safety of electric vehicles.