March 15, 2017

Forensics and Failure Analysis

Jolson Technologies takes tear downs to the next level. Often even if a company performs teardowns, they don’t provide interpretation of their results. Since this is often the need, the analysis falls short of the intended result. We use the methods of science to guide our interpretations of the analysis. We will provide estimates of our confidence in both the analysis and our explanations.

If you have battery products that are not meeting expectations of life or performance there could be many possible reasons. These include: operations outside of normal temperature or current limits, poor quality, challenging applications, problems with BMS settings, among others. We offer reference electrode determinations to evaluate the cell and electrode of failure. We will then focus on that cell element to investigate the cause of failure. Our specialty is both lithium-ion and lead-acid batteries.

More specific to forensics evaluation, are product liability investigations. In past work with Case Forensics, Dr. Olson has learned the difficulties of investigating lithium-ion battery fires. If a lithium-ion battery is involved in a fire, it is destroyed whether it started the fire or was consumed by it.However, like all forensic science there are often indicators of specific failure modes. Although x-rays and CT can be somewhat useful, the physical examination of the remnants of the battery can often be highly instructive. We feel our electrochemical approach has significant advantages compared to the more physical approaches used in many engineering firms.