Battery Contact Adapter and Busbar Plug Assembly for Reversible Packs
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current methods for connecting a plurality of battery cells, particularly in battery packs with more than 1000 cells, face challenges in process time, post-processing, quality, and reversibility due to seamless connections like welding or gluing.
Innovation Solution
A contacting system using contact adapters and busbars that allow for a plug connection, enabling a modular structure with serial and parallel configurations, utilizing a central and peripheral contact adapter to change the contacting direction from axial to radial, and a busbar with bending portions to compensate for height differences, allowing for easy assembly and tolerance compensation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If seamless connections (welding or gluing) are used to connect battery cells, then electrical connection reliability is improved, but process time increases and reversibility is lost
Solution Approach 1:
The contacting system is divided into modular components: contact adapters that attach to individual battery terminals and a busbar structure that connects multiple adapters. This segmentation allows for quick assembly and disassembly compared to seamless connections, reducing process time while maintaining reliable electrical connection through the modular interface.
Solution Approach 2:
Contact adapters serve as intermediary components between the battery terminals and the busbar. These adapters simplify the connection interface and enable reversible connecting while maintaining reliable electrical contact, resolving the contradiction between connection reliability and process time/reversibility.
2Reliability
If seamless connections (welding or gluing) are used to connect battery cells, then electrical connection reliability is improved, but reversibility is lost
Solution Approach 1:
The contacting system is divided into modular components: contact adapters that attach to individual battery terminals and a busbar structure that connects multiple adapters. This segmentation allows for quick assembly and disassembly compared to seamless connections, reducing process time while maintaining reliable electrical connection through the modular interface.
Solution Approach 2:
Contact adapters serve as intermediary components between the battery terminals and the busbar. These adapters simplify the connection interface and enable reversible connecting while maintaining reliable electrical contact, resolving the contradiction between connection reliability and process time/reversibility.
3Productivity
If contact adapters and busbars are used for modular connection, then assembly time is reduced and reversibility is enabled, but manufacturing precision requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
Contact adapters are pre-attached to battery terminals before busbar assembly. This preliminary action ensures proper positioning and alignment, reducing the precision requirements during final busbar assembly while maintaining high assembly speed and enabling reversible connections.
Data Source
AI summary
A contact adapter comprises a central contact adapter extending in the axial direction and having a bottom surface for attachment to a central terminal of the battery, an opposite tip for passing through a central contact opening of the busbar, and a side surface extending between the tip and the bottom surface having a central contacting portion for contacting a central terminal of the central contact opening of the busbar in a radial direction. The contact adapter comprises a peripheral contact adapter for arranging around the central contact adapter, the peripheral contact adapter having a bottom plate for attaching to an annular terminal of the battery and a hollow contact cylinder, having a peripheral contacting portion for contacting a peripheral terminal of a peripheral contact opening of the bus bar in the radial direction. The central contact height is greater than the peripheral contact height.