Real-World Challenges in Battery Testing: Safety, Durability & Performance in Mechanical Environments

Battery Electric Vehicles and the Issues When Testing Them - Martin Brown, HORIBA MIRA
Battery electric vehicles are no more dangerous than conventional vehicles, but they are dangerous in a different way! This talk will focus on the safety and practical implications of testing battery electric vehicles, the need to identify these new hazards during testing, and how we can successfully and safely respond to an emergency incident when it occurs.

Revealing the Hidden Structure: Advancing Battery Manufacturing with Computed Tomography - Dorota Matras, UK Battery Industrialisation Centre
At UKBIC, X-ray computed tomography (X-ray CT) plays a central role in assessing the quality of battery cells manufactured on our production lines. This non-invasive, high-resolution technique allows us to examine internal structures without disassembling the cell, making it invaluable for both routine quality control and detailed forensic analysis when issues arise. CT enables us to identify features such as electrode misalignment, cracking, and other internal defects, while also providing insight into complex architectural elements including tab placement, electrode length variations, and electrode start positions. By providing fast, consistent, and accurate characterisation of fully assembled cells, CT supports continuous improvement of our cell assembly processes. In this presentation, we will show examples of CT imaging highlighting how this capability enhances inspection, diagnostics, and process optimisation.

Instrumentation Solutions for Battery Testing - Adrian Weeks, StrainSense
Battery testing involves a wide range of applications including shock, vibration, charging cycle, thermal runaway, uncontrolled current flow and short circuit testing.   The analysis techniques include power and energy measurement, modal test, spectrum analysis and order analysis to streamline testing, analyse compliance with standards, verify modelling data and report generation. Testing takes place both on test rigs and in-vehicle to analyse batteries under all conditions, this presentation provides examples for all these applications.

Vibration and shock testing on batteries to simulate extreme conditions - Hassan Hussain-Shah, HORIBA MIRA
Vibration and shock testing on batteries is essential to ensure that battery systems can withstand the mechanical stresses they may encounter during transportation, handling, or real-world use. These tests simulate extreme condition such as drops, collisions, or continuous vibrations during transit and they help to identify potential issues like internal short circuits, components loosening, or casing failures that could lead to reduced performance or dangerous outcomes like overheating, leakage, or fire. By replicating these conditions in a controlled environment (with systems in place to stop testing if any safety limits are breached), manufacturers can evaluate the battery’s structural integrity and functional stability, ensuring compliance with industry standards and safeguarding both users and equipment.

Digital Image Correlation for Battery Integrity, Safety and Structural Optimisation - Presenter TBC, DeltaXD
This presentation explores how Digital Image Correlation (DIC) is leveraged to validate simulation models and assess the material and structural behaviour of electric-vehicle battery systems. Drawing on real-world examples—including pole crash tests on battery tray housings, vibration studies, and operational swelling of prismatic cells—the session demonstrates how full-field, high-speed deformation measurement provides critical insight into safety risks such as short-circuiting and thermal events. The talk highlights how DIC improves understanding of housing stiffness, module displacement, deformation modes and operational loads, supporting safer and more efficient battery and EV platform development.

The Challenges of the Measurement of Thermal Characteristics in HV battery packs - Peter Newton, Vector
HV battery packs have to be designed and built to work in extreme conditions over many years. They need to work in low and high temperature environments with daily charge and discharge cycles. Simulation of temperature profiles can be used to design a battery pack against thermal events. However, there is no substitute for actually building the pack and testing it. How can battery packs operating at high voltages and above be tested safely without compromising the design of the pack? This presentation will describe some of the challenges and how these might be addressed.

Beyond the Surface: Unlocking Insight with Thermal & Pressure Mapping Technologies - Andrew Ramage, Techni Measure
As electrochemical energy storage systems evolve, the need for detailed spatial and temporal diagnostics has become essential to improving safety, performance, and durability. This presentation covers advanced thermal and pressure mapping technologies that enable real-time, high-resolution insight into the internal dynamics of batteries under operating conditions. These sensor systems provide critical surface and interface data that conventional point measurements often miss. In battery testing, the interplay between thermal and pressure effects is a key contributor to degradation mechanisms. Thermal expansion during charging and discharging cycles induces mechanical stress on cell layers, which can lead to pressure build-up, electrode deformation, and ultimately delamination. Conversely, localised increases in pressure—due to gas evolution, swelling, or structural fatigue—can alter heat transfer characteristics, trap thermal energy, and accelerate failure modes such as thermal runaway. By simultaneously mapping these parameters, engineers can identify early warning signs of cell degradation, validate thermal management designs, and correlate electrochemical behaviour with mechanical responses.

Challenges and solutions to battery durability testing in high voltage environments - PCB Piezotronics

Martin Brown - HORIBA MIRA
Martin is an Improvement Consultant at HORIBA MIRA Ltd, a global provider of automotive engineering, research and test services. An experienced consultant, Martin has worked for over 25 years in the automotive industry and is a Chartered Engineer (CEng) with the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE). He is skilled in the design and build of new energy vector vehicles, including high voltage batteries, hydrogen fuel cells, hybrid systems and liquid nitrogen cryogenics. A leading international industrial expert on the provision of safety training and consultancy for high voltage vehicles and other new energy vector systems.

Hassan Hussain-Shah - HORIBA MIRA
Hassan Hussain-Shah is a Principal Engineer at HORIBA MIRA Ltd, a global provider of automotive engineering, research, and test services. Hassan has over a decade of experience in the industry, specialising in battery testing under mechanical and climatic conditions. His expertise focuses on ensuring safety, durability, and performance in challenging environments, with a strong emphasis on developing robust testing methodologies for advanced energy storage systems.

Adrian Weeks, StrainSense Ltd
Adrian Weeks is the data acquisition product specialist at StrainSense Ltd, specialising in data acquisition systems, power analysers and analysis software. He helps users with DAQ system installation advice and setup support to ensure maximum effectiveness of testing, often used with the company’s extensive range of sensors. He started his working life using data acquisition systems for aircraft system testing. From there he moved into automotive and motorsport data acquisition system sales.

Dorota Matras, UKBIC
Dr Dorota Matras is a Materials Scientist at UKBIC. She joined the Electrochemistry team in 2023, where she supports customer projects focused on benchmarking battery cell technologies and forensic analysis of novel cell technologies. Additionally, she serves as a technical expert in tomography and data analysis. Prior to this, she spent 3.5 years as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Faraday Institution and Diamond Light Source, focusing on the development of multi-modal imaging and tomography of functional materials at the nanoscale. Her research primarily explored the solid-state chemistry of novel cathode materials used in Li-ion batteries. Dorota holds a BEng from Warsaw University of Technology and an MSc in Chemical Engineering from École Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Paris. She later moved to the UK, where she obtained her PhD from the School of Materials at the University of Manchester in 2019. Her doctoral research focused on the application of chemical imaging techniques to study catalytic reactors for methane upgrade processes.

Andrew Ramage, Techni Measure
Andrew graduated from University of Southampton with MEng (hons) Aeronautics & Astronautics in 2001, initially following a career in helicopter design with Leonardo, holding various engineering roles including system safety, aerodynamics, flight test, research & development and project engineering. In 2015 he became a Director & co-owner of Techni Measure, supplying many different types of sensor for engineering testing applications, including accelerometers. In 2018 he co-founded Quad I to offer measurement & testing services alongside Techni Measure.

Peter Newton, Vector
Peter graduated from the University of Bradford with a degree in Electronic, Communication and Computer Engineering.  He followed this with an MSc from UMIST in Instrumentation Design and Application.  His engineering journey continued with Trumeter designing programmable controllers for the textile industry.  Following the introduction of CAN to configure and communicate between modules he joined Accutest as a business development manager promoting the use of CAN-based calibration tools into the car industry.  He moved to Siemens VDO as a resident engineer and finally project manager delivering tire pressure monitoring into Jaguar Land Rover.  His current employer is Vector GB where for the last 16 years he has been responsible for technical sales, customer support and training for Vector’s measurement and calibration tools, high speed interfaces, data loggers and measurement modules.