Safe and lightweight battery enclosure design for zero-emission vehicles

Objective

The SALVE project aims to develop a Safe and Lightweight Battery Enclosure Design for Zero-Emission Vehicles (ZEVs) by addressing critical shortcomings in current design methodologies. Existing electric vehicle battery systems are heavy, costly, and require advanced thermal management for optimal performance and safety. Current design approaches often consider structural and thermal characteristics separately, lack multi-material integration and practical manufacturing constraints, and suffer from high computational costs. SALVE proposes an innovative 3D thermo-structural multiphysics Topology Optimization (TO) framework. This methodology will concurrently optimize battery enclosures for mechanical integrity (stiffness, stress, vibration) and thermal performance (heat dissipation, uniform temperature distribution). It integrates multi-material formulation and manufacturing constraints to ensure the optimized designs are buildable and industrially viable. To overcome computational bottlenecks, SALVE will implement advanced acceleration strategies, combining Reduced Order Models (ROM), Machine Learning (ML) surrogates, and High-Performance Computing (HPC) on multi-core CPUs and GPUs, significantly reducing design iteration time for complex, large-scale models. Developed at the Centre International de Mètodes Numèrics en Enginyeria (CIMNE) using the in-house Julia-based Swan code, the methodology will undergo rigorous validation against commercial software and real-world scenarios. By achieving significant weight reduction (projected 10%) and enhanced safety (up to 3%), SALVE directly contributes to the EU's zero-emission targets, fostering sustainable transportation, improved energy efficiency, and increased EV market penetration. This interdisciplinary effort brings together expertise from engineering, computer science, applied mathematics, and materials science to drive innovation in EV component design.