Performance Update for a Large Emergency Aircraft Thermal Battery

Eagle-Picher designed, developed, qualified and produced a relatively large, high-power thermal battery for use on the Swedish JAS 39 Gripen Fighter Aircraft. The battery, EAP-12188 is an Electrically-Activated Primary thermal battery, and was qualified in June 1994. This paper presents and evaluates subsequent lot acceptance test (LAT) performance data. To date, Eagle-Picher has tested 50 LAT batteries and delivered over 218 batteries for service use. No battery has failed to meet the specification requirements. Furthermore, performance has been very consistent over nine production lots of batteries. Battery data from both LAT batteries and daily engineering evaluation test batteries are analyzed and discussed herein.