Efficient Fault Diagnosis in Lithium-Ion Battery Packs: A Structural Approach with Moving Horizon Estimation

Abstract

Safe and reliable operation of lithium-ion battery packs depends on effective fault diagnosis. However, model-based approaches often encounter two major challenges: high computational complexity and extensive sensor requirements. To address these bottlenecks, this paper introduces a novel approach that harnesses the structural properties of battery packs, including cell uniformity and the sparsity of fault occurrences. We integrate this approach into a Moving Horizon Estimation (MHE) framework and estimate fault signals such as internal and external short circuits and faults in voltage and current sensors. To mitigate computational demands, we propose a hierarchical solution to the MHE problem. The proposed solution breaks up the pack-level MHE problem into smaller problems and solves them efficiently. Finally, we perform extensive simulations across various battery pack configurations and fault types to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The results highlight that the proposed approach simultaneously reduces the computational demands and sensor requirements of fault diagnosis.