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The demand for lithium-ion battery powered road vehicles continues to increase around the world. As more of these become operational across the globe, their involvement in traffic accidents and incidents is likely to rise. This can damage the lithium-ion battery and subsequently pose a threat to occupants and responders as well as those involved in vehicle recovery and salvage operations. The project this paper is based on aimed to alleviate such concerns. To provide a basis for fire safety systems to be applied to damaged EVs, hazards have been identified and means for preventing and controlling lithium-ion battery fires, including preventive measures during workshop and salvage activities were studied. Tests were also performed with fixed fire suppression systems applying suppressant inside traction batteries which showed to improve their safety.

The work involves fabrication of natural fibre/Elium® composites using resin infusion technique. The jute fabrics were treated using phosphorus-carbon based flame retardant (FR) agent, a phosphonate solution and graphene nano-platelet (GnP), followed by resin infusion, to produce FR and graphene-based composites. The properties of these composites were compared with those of the Control (jute fabric/Elium®). As obtained from the cone calorimeter and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, the peak heat release rate reduced significantly after the FR and GnP treatments of fabrics whereas total smoke release and quantity of carbon monoxide increased with the incorporation of FR. The addition of GnP had almost no effect on carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide yield. Dynamic mechanical analysis demonstrated that coating jute fabrics with GnP particles led to an enhanced glass transition temperature by 14%. Scanning electron microscopy showed fibre pull-out locations in the tensile fracture surface of the laminates after incorporation of both fillers, which resulted in reduced tensile properties.

The aluminothermic welding (ATW) process is the most commonly used welding process for welding rails (track) in the field. The large amount of weld metal added in the ATW process may result in a wide uneven surface zone on the rail head, which may, in rare cases, lead to irregularities in wear and plastic deformation due to high dynamic wheel-rail forces as wheels pass. The present paper studies the introduction of additional forging to the ATW process, intended to reduce the width of the zone affected by the heat input, while not creating a more detrimental residual stress field. Simulations using a novel thermo-mechanical FE model of the ATW process show that addition of a forging pressure leads to a somewhat smaller width of the zone affected by heat. This is also found in a metallurgical examination, showing that this zone (weld metal and heat-affected zone) is fully pearlitic. Only marginal differences are found in the residual stress field when additional forging is applied. In both cases, large tensile residual stresses are found in the rail web at the weld. Additional forging may increase the risk of hot cracking due to an increase in plastic strains within the welded area.