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Why Battery Performance is Like Traffic (and How To Model It)
The trade-off between speed and accuracy is at the heart of battery modeling research. Scientists and engineers are exploring how to solve it.
By , Ph.D. Candidate in Mechanical Engineering, Missouri University of Science and Technology
Lithium-ion batteries are quietly powering large parts of the world, including electric vehicles and smartphones. They have revolutionized how people store and use energy. But as these batteries become more central to daily life, they bring more attention to the challenges of managing them and the energy they store safely, efficiently and intelligently.
I’m a who studies these nearly ubiquitous batteries. They have , yet researchers like me are still trying to fully understand how these batteries behave — especially when they are working hard.
Batteries may seem simple, but they are as complicated as the real-world uses people devise for them.
The big picture
At their core, lithium-ion batteries rely on the , called ions, of the element lithium between two electric poles, or electrodes. The…
