Beside Regulatory Tests, What Else We Can Do?

Published: Monday, 17 October 2016
Battery Out Of Control

Recently, the accidents of battery explosion, burning of Samsung Galaxy Note 7 had made the consumers and government look into safety of battery and mobile phone seriously. These accidents, may hurt the user and surroundings, seriously, it may also hurt a huge global manufacturer, or even the economy of a country. However, these 3C products had passed numbers of regulatory safety tests, and before the shipment, it had been tested by the standard QC process, why would such unexpected accidents was still happened? Obviously, these battery explosion & burning accidents were caused by some hidden risks, which were came from the defective hardware/software design, low quality components, unadvised mechanical thermal design. These hidden risk can be raised up until a certain period of usage by the user, until it is out of control and got explosion. So, it is not the normal regulatory tests or QC tests can detect these hidden risks in advance. Besides, due to the bloody competitions in the market, the 3C product vendors typically need to announce the product as early as possible, and typically has no enough time to apply more detailed, time consuming tests. Mobile Phone Becomes An Uncertain Bomb in The Pocket!

ARC, an Accelerating Rate Calorimeter, unlike those traditional general-purpose thermal analyzers, ARC products series are unique instruments, which are designed specific for the battery safety tests or chemicals safety tests. Those potential risks of battery explosion & burning, were considered into the design. ARC applies the stricter environment conditions than normal ones, and accelerates the simulation of various out-of-control possibilities of explosion & burning of the batteries. These possibilities include battery overcharge, over-discharge use of the situation. ARC has a big sample container, which allows most of the bigger batteries to be placed into the calorimeter, and apply all the strict conditions to the better until it reaches its out-of-control limits and goes into explosion and burning. ARC can provide the data of the safety conditions and the tolerance, limitations of the battery and cellular phones to the researchers or to the product designers.

The accidents of battery combustion, explosion hazards, are typically caused by the ill-conceived design, low-cost electronic components, leads the problems to the battery in case of external short circuit, internal short circuit, external overheating, and internal overheating. Or because of the poor charger, or even the improper use of consumer’s behavior, resulting in the battery overcharge, over discharge, or short circuit situation, finally battery going into out of control, resulting in burning, explosion accidents. Since the hidden defects acts began until the accidents, there is usually a series of processes, as the below figure:

 

The Process of Battery Accident, Since The Potential Risk Starts
The Process of Battery Accident, Since The Potential Risk Starts

Conversely, if some potential problems, such as an APP crash, so that the phone's CPU acts in the full speed for a long time, and causes excessive discharge, under the continued infinite warming, the final situation of the phone is unexpected. (I think some users have been experienced in the inexplicable continuously temperature raising of a cell phone, until rebooting the system.)

ARC, Accelerating Rate Calorimeter, will be able to give the product the conditions of out-of-control, so that the battery and some electric components, under the scope of safety control, to reach the edge of out-of-control, and going into the real out-of-control situation. By this way, research is able to understand the degree of risk, and understand the limits of out-of-control. It is the way to improve the product design, and further avoid unnecessary accidents. During the tests, ARC maintains the safety for the instrument users, under the controlled safe operation, observe the out-of-control situation of the products.

If you need further information of ARC Accelerated Runaway Calorimeter, please feel free to Contact ACTTR service technician. We will help you to evaluate requirements as much as possible!

Besides, you can also read the article, “What ARC Can Tell You in HWS Cycles?”, to have more understanding to ARC.