Brianne (Bri) DeMattia has supported NASA’s missions since 2009 through various roles within the Photovoltaic and Electrochemical Systems Branch at NASA Glenn Research Center, currently serving as the Battery Technology Lead. Bri holds a Master’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Cleveland State University. Her focus at NASA has been electrochemistry, mainly research and development of experimental battery materials and cell and battery-level evaluation, including both space and aeronautics-related missions. Bri currently serves as the Principal Investigator on a project called “SPARRCI,” addressing safety of lithium-ion and next-generation battery technologies through embedded sensors and fault detection algorithms, aimed at improving safety and performance of batteries to enable electrified aircraft concepts.
Urban Air Mobility and other short-haul electric aircraft concepts are capable of transforming the way we commute, but realistic mission durations can only be achieved through improvements to energy storage technology, with the smallest of all-electric vehicle concepts likely requiring a full battery system-level specific energy of at least 400 watt-hours per kilogram (Wh/kg).
Not only do traditional batteries fall short of meeting the energy demands to enable electric aviation, there are added safety risks to implementing these concepts as primary power due to the possibility of thermal runaway events. State-of-the-art packaging approaches aim to contain failures by engineering around them, therefore containing fire or explosion hazards.
Funded by NASA’s Transformative Aeronautics Concepts Program (TACP) Convergent Aeronautics Solutions (CAS) and Transformational Tools & Technologies (TTT) projects, the Sensor-based Prognostics to Avoid Runaway Reactions and Catastrophic Ignition effort, SPARRCI, aims to eliminate safety risks of lithium-ion and next-generation lithium-based batteries. Combining internal cell-embedded sensors with nondestructive evaluation techniques, additional insight into the inner workings of the battery cell over its lifetime is possible. With this additional data, prognostics and modeling efforts allow for detection of abnormal behavior bordering on failure, with the ability to provide early warning such that the battery may be taken offline prior to catastrophic failure events.
With insight into internal cell operations, SPARRCI will enable a safe, functional battery pack that does not threaten thermal runaway propagation and provides improved performance by avoiding the need for excessive packaging. The SPARRCI concept has the potential to not only provide safe batteries, but also allow for battery operation to be pushed to its limits to enable next-generation electric aircraft concepts.
Traditional batteries are not capable of enabling many next-generation electrified aircraft concepts. This effort aims to improve safety of batteries by focusing on advanced state-of-health monitoring/management to reduce safety incidents and improve overall system performance.
