industrie automation Energiesysteme (iaE) is a manufacturer of charging technology for traction applications that uses Q-Leveling battery management. Q-Leveling battery management has now been certified according to EN ISO 13849 (safety functions). The main reason for BENNING CMS Technology (BCT) to use Q-Leveling is to increase battery service life, which in turn will reduce the number of service calls.
Q-Leveling is able to meet this requirement because it is an active process able to handle cells of varying capacities. It provides the relevant information about each cell to the battery management system, which enables careful and efficient operation. This improves energy conversion, shortens charging time and prolongs a battery’s lifespan. Would you like to learn more? This way, please!
liflex NG battery modules from iaE, equipped with Q-Leveling.
Functional safety? Protect against malfunctions!
Functional safety is part of a system’s overall safety. Its purpose is to protect both people and the environment against malfunctions. Experts call this 2nd level protection. Batteries, or battery management systems, are able to evaluate the risks associated with overvoltage, undervoltage, too high or too low temperatures as well as with battery behaviour after shock or during vibration. A range of application-related scenarios are created to examine this. Take traction batteries, for example: What happens if the battery system is being charged via a cable, and someone gets into the vehicle and tries to start it?
Certification of the battery management system
Traction batteries operate at a rather high voltage range. That is why the certification of the battery management system according to functional safety (EN ISO 13849) is a must.
Certification should be part of the development plan for a battery including battery management system as early on as possible. It also makes total sense to involve a certification auditor into the development during an early phase. Certification auditors can contribute ideas and help think about all requirements of functional safety right from the start. Documentation also plays a key role for certification projects.
Q-Leveling and certification – the direct line
The certification of battery and battery management system was a joint project of iaE and BCT, which built on the previous implementation of Q-Leveling in iaE traction batteries. The division of tasks for the certification was clear, the collaboration was close:
The team at iaE was responsible for the hardware, while the BCT team was in charge of the software. Since changes to the hardware can have a direct effect on the software – and vice versa – continuous, close cooperation was necessary. iaE and BCT are neighbours in March near Freiburg, which made communication easy. The iaE colleagues from other German sites always had a direct line to the project via modern online communication tools.
liflex NG battery modules and charger from iaE, equipped with Q-Leveling.
