Introduction
Developing batteries for automotive and energy storage applications is a high-stakes challenge. Aging analysis is often performed later in the development process, resulting in increased costs, prolonged timelines, and missed opportunities for system optimization.
TWAICE offers a proprietary approach to deliver aging insights early to customers —often months or even years ahead of usual extensive testing processes. This capability empowers engineers to make informed, strategic decisions faster, enabling optimized product performance, and significant cost savings.
This article aims to deep dive how TWAICE’s proprietary modeling approach enables early aging insights in the battery development.
Importance of Aging Analysis in Battery Development
To maximize the potential of a battery, every aspect of the system including battery management system (BMS), thermal management, and overall system design—needs to be optimized. Achieving this requires understanding not just the initial performance but also how batteries age over time. This usually requires extensive testing to collect this data, it can be costly and time-consuming and delays critical design decisions adding to long development cycles.
By incorporating aging models early in the development, teams can optimize the battery management system (BMS), thermal management, and overall system design to achieve better results.
The TWAICE Advantage: Early Aging Insights
Building battery aging models can take up one to two years with extensive testing (source: TWAICE customer base) resulting costly and long processes, and late contribution to design refinement and finalization.
With TWAICE Premium Models, the first aging results can be delivered within 4-6 months of testing, and preliminary models can be delivered
6-8 months for NMC/NCA chemistries.
8–11 months for LFP chemistries.
Example Delivery Timeline for NMC/NCA chemistries
Proprietary Model Development Approach: Precision and Efficiency
Through extensive experience over the years with various customers and large number of cells tested, TWAICE has developed a proprietary model development approach. Our innovative design-of-experiment definition enables fast delivery times and fewer cells required for testing while delivering highly precise simulation models.
Optimized Test Matrices: Asymmetrical Approach
Unlike traditional symmetrical test setups, TWAICE employs asymmetrical test matrices informed by statistical design-of-experiments.
This matrix distributes test cells in a manner that enables generation of highly accurate simulation models with fewer upfront resources required.
This approach enables to maximize testing efficiency and coverage across several stress factors (e.g., temperature, C-rate, DOD, SOC, etc.) while minimizing the number of cells required for testing
Traditional symmetrical test setups vs TWAICE's asymmetrical test setup
Accelerated Model Delivery
Depending on specific use cases, TWAICE aims for the highest coverage of the respective operational window by testing in the shortest amount of time possible.
Our experience in testing different cells (capacity range, format and chemistry) allow us to understand the aging behavior and develop a preliminary model confidently in limited time:
Within four months of testing, enough aging behavior is observed for NMC and NCA chemistries to develop a high-fidelity cell model
LFP chemistries require a minimum of six months of testing due to their slower aging characteristics
Advanced testing methods include customized check-up procedures such as float current analysis, enables to detect trends in aging phenomena within three months.
Innovation Through Testing Procedures
TWAICE’s testing procedures are a key component of our innovative approach to model development, continuously improving through collaborations with leading institutions, such as TUM.
When developing new features, TWAICE uses laboratory testing (both destructive and non-destructive methods) to benchmark new test protocols and ensure that KPIs of interest can be derived from the data. These procedures are then integrated into our workflow.
These procedures probe specific charge/discharge and degradation phenomena within the cell, and further, are designed with our modeling pipeline in mind.
Non-Destructive State-of-Health Analysis
TWAICE’s testing procedures are designed to extract critical KPIs (e.g., capacity, resistance) without destructive teardown, preserving the integrity of tested cells.
Conclusion
When aging analysis becomes a central focus early in development, the entire battery development process benefits. TWAICE’s proprietary model development approach and simulation models propel projects forward—faster, smarter, and more sustainably.
Contact us today to learn how TWAICE can accelerate your development cycle and help design batteries more efficiently from the start.