German Aerospace Center (DLR)

The DLR-Institute of Engineering Thermodynamics has over 180 employees conducting research in the field of efficient and sustainable energy storage and energy conversion technologies. The Department of Computational Electrochemistry, headed by Prof. Arnulf Latz, contributes to the research activities with modeling approaches for fuel cells and batteries on the continuum scale. The modeling activities on various battery technologies are concentrated in the Multiphysical Modelling Group at the Helmholtz Institute Ulm (HIU). A core competence of the department is the microstructure-resolved simulation of Li-Ion cells with the software BEST, which is developed in cooperation with the Fraunhofer ITWM in Kaiserslautern. Particular emphasis is set on a rigorous approach based on non-equilibrium thermodynamics which allows to identify limiting processes in battery electrodes, to analyze local events triggering degradation mechanisms, and to derive improved electrode structures.