Multi-functional SMC-aluminum battery tray to drive lightweight design

Functional integration and lightweight design are important tasks especially for modern electric vehicles. Development of multi-functional assemblies for the battery box of the future is one of the challenges in the field of electric mobility. The housing must perform many tasks: structural stiffening and sealing (waterproofness) as well as crash protection and thermal management for the batteries. In this paper results from a new developed multi-functional assembly of a SMC-aluminum battery tray will be presented and discussed. The outer housing shell is manufactured by forming SMC directly on an aluminum sandwich component in one stroke compression molding. Furthermore, passive temperature control functions are integrated into the core of the aluminum sandwich realized with switchable air-cooling and phase-change-material integrated into the foam. Additionally, sensors for structural health monitoring, temperature and humidity are integrated. Finally the process design and manufacturing tests will be explained.