Comparing the NVH behaviour of an innovative steel-wood hybrid battery housing design to an all aluminium design 2024-01-2949

The production of electric vehicles (EVs) has a significant environmental impact, with up to 50 % of their lifetime greenhouse gas potential attributed to manufacturing processes. The use of sustainable materials in EV design is therefore crucial for reducing their overall carbon footprint. Wood laminates have emerged as a promising alternative due to their renewable nature. Additionally, wood-based materials offer unique damping properties that can contribute to improved Noise, Vibration, and Harshness (NVH) characteristics. In comparison to conventional materials such as aluminum, ply wood structures exhibit beneficial damping properties. The loss factor of plywood structures with a thickness below 20 mm ranges from 0.013 to 0.032. Comparable aluminum structures however exhibit only a fraction of this loss factor with a range between 0.002 and 0.005. In this study, the potential of lightweight wood composites, specifically steel-wood hybrid structures, is investigated in the design of battery packs for electric vehicles. The results demonstrate that steel-wood hybrid structures can provide attractive stiffness properties at low weights while utilizing the excellent damping properties inherent in plywood. This combination allows for effective noise and vibration reduction within the battery pack, enhancing passenger comfort and overall vehicle performance while reducing the life cycle greenhouse gas potential of the structural battery pack components by up to 50 %. This research contributes to the field of sustainable EV design by exploring the advantages of wood composites in the context of NVH optimization. The utilization of steel-wood hybrid structures represents a novel approach to exploit the unique properties of both materials, combining stiffness and damping characteristics. This study offers a pathway towards reducing the environmental impact of EV production while improving the NVH performance of electric vehicles, by incorporating sustainable materials like wood laminates into battery pack design. Overall, this study highlights the potential of steel-wood hybrid structures as a viable alternative for reducing the greenhouse gas potential associated with electric vehicle manufacturing. The findings emphasize the importance of considering sustainable materials and their unique properties in the design process to achieve optimal NVH performance.