Lithium plating is a critical barrier to fast charging in electric and
hybrid-electric vehicles, occurring at high state of charge (SOC) or low
temperatures when Li⁺ deposits as metallic lithium on the anode
surface instead of intercalating into graphite. At low temperatures,
plated lithium may form dendrites that pierce the separator and trigger
thermal runaway, while at high SOC, irreversible plating accelerates
capacity fade by depleting cyclable lithium. Despite extensive study,
lithium plating remains difficult to incorporate into battery
management systems (BMS) due to computational complexity and the
challenge of real-time detection, leading to reliance on conservative
lookup maps. This work presents a lightweight empirical model for
predicting plating-free charging limits in lithium nickel manganese
cobalt (NMC) cells. A high-fidelity pseudo-2D electrochemical model
was exercised across a wide range of charge rates and temperatures to
capture the coupled effects of SOC, temperature, and current on plating
potential. From these results, an empirical separable closed-form
function was derived that is continuous, differentiable, and
computationally efficient, enabling onboard real-time implementation.
Validation against the high-fidelity model demonstrated strong
agreement, with adjusted R
2 > 0.99 and RMSE on the order of 1–3 A
across the domain. Co-simulation confirmed that the model enforces
plating-free charging across cold to hot conditions, while pulse-current
tests showed that the continuous limits remain conservative under
transient operation. In addition, charge-time analysis revealed an
exponential dependence on temperature, leading to a compact
correlation for estimating charge durations under varying thermal
environments. Unlike detailed electrochemical models, this
framework provides a practical, validated function for defining
plating-free charging envelopes, directly suited for integration into
BMS and supervisory charging strategies
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