The FAA is asking the airline industry for ideas on how to produce high-energy storage devices—including lithium-chemistry batteries—that are safer and easier to certify for use on aircraft.
In a new Broad Agency Announcement, the agency said it is investigating the feasibility of new technologies, such as less-flammable electrolytes; methods to reduce the impact of thermal runaway; and the need for new aerospace standards for high-energy-density battery cells.
“Recent in-service aircraft have suffered several highly visible battery failures during this development and early service life,” the FAA said of past failures of the Boeing 787’s lithium-ion rechargeable main and auxiliary power unit batteries, which grounded the nascent fleet for approximately four months in the winter of 2013. Along with an NTSBinvestigation, the FAA initiated a review of the aircraft’s certification program.
A Boeing fix included better casings and vents to dump overboard the gases or smoke from battery cells experiencing thermal runaway, a typical failure mode for lithium batteries.
“Lessons learned during the investigation include: There has been no usage of reduced-flammable electrolytes in [Lithium] batteries, existing standards are difficult to comply with, and such standards need to be applied to all batteries and electrical storage devices for aerospace use,” the FAA said. Boeing originally certified the 787 batteries under FAA-issued special conditions for lithium-ion batteries that have since been updated with more-rigorous testing protocols.
The FAA said technology developed under the new program should provide “faster reaction times, greater diagnostics abilities and methods to achieve a better understanding of incident precursors as well as repair and maintenance techniques for the hardware necessary for the implementation of high electrical energy storage devices on aircraft.”
Along with studying existing guidelines, standards and regulations, the winning bidders will also develop new guidelines to improve and standardize the system verification and validation of high-energy battery technologies.
“The program will ultimately include an implementation plan of these guidelines into a standard or specification using any accepted aviation governing bodies such as RTCA, SAE or IEEE,” the FAA said. Interested companies must respond by Feb. 29.