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Eagle-Picher designed, developed, qualified and produced a relatively large, high-power thermal battery for use on the Swedish JAS 39 Gripen Fighter Aircraft. The battery, EAP-12188 is an Electrically-Activated Primary thermal battery, and was qualified in June 1994. This paper presents and evaluates subsequent lot acceptance test (LAT) performance data. To date, Eagle-Picher has tested 50 LAT batteries and delivered over 218 batteries for service use. No battery has failed to meet the specification requirements. Furthermore, performance has been very consistent over nine production lots of batteries. Battery data from both LAT batteries and daily engineering evaluation test batteries are analyzed and discussed herein.

Nickel and silver-metal hydride batteries are being developed for aerospace applications by Eagle-Picher. Metal hydride batteries offer a number of advantages over other aerospace battery systems. Nickel-metal hydride batteries have twice the gravimetric energy density of nickel-cadmium and twice the volumetric energy density of nickel-hydrogen. Silver-metal hydride batteries have the potential of three times the energy density of nickel-metal hydride and exhibit superior charge retention characteristics. Aerospace metal hydride batteries are hermetically sealed, operate at low pressure and are prismatic in geometry. They exhibit excellent overcharge and overdischarge capability. Preliminary calorimetry data indicates superior thermal performance as compared to nickel-cadmium and nickel-hydrogen batteries. Some initial AC impedance spectroscopy work has been completed on both metal-hydrogen and metal-hydride battery systems.