If only Lucas had this PR team
Then the electrics on my mini could be said to perform a "safety venting procedure" every time I triy to use the headlights and the wipers when it starts raining.
Boeing has outlined plans to improve the performance and safety features of the batteries used in its 787 aircraft, after two of the planes infamously experienced on-board incidents at Takamatsu and Boston, but has stopped short of offering a thorough explanation for just what went wrong. What is known is that something caused …
The problem is that Boeing's stupid engineers are trying to force their design contractors to put a compact battery design in a plane, when everyone in the battery market knows full well, that you can't get away with such a design without heat overun! Every EV maker realized this, but the junior gee-man execs at Boeing will not admit it. They better wake up before the FAA grounds them permanently for such stupid decisions. You gotta wonder just what is going on in that company - that used to have such good sense, and allowed so many of us to fly so safely, that they refuse to see what is in front of there faces and risk the safety of the flying public?!! What happened to good 'ol Boeing safety sense? Stupid top executives?
It make me wonder what other bad decisions they are making on modern composite superstructure?! The mighty fall hard, but not with my butt flying on it!
If I were a stock holder, I'd wonder!
Years ago I was the lucky person with our firm who took the (Christmas week) phone call announcing that a device which we'd just installed had exploded and reduced itself to small fragments and a cloud of black smoke in a shopping mall in the NE US, prompting an evacuation and demand that we immediately remove the approximately 1,800 other copies deployed around the mall's local community (this was in 2001 and in general emergency responders were quite jumpy, to say the least).
Reversing this setback was quite an education. Although their battery had exploded for a reason that was never satisfactorily explained, luckily our vendor (a very large French battery firm) appeared well-versed in the art of euphemisms as they apply to badly behaving batteries. We were instructed to never use the words "explode" or "detonate" or "burst" in the technical reports demanded of us by regulatory authorities; the proper words to use were "spontaneous disassembly."
And lo, the magic words worked. We never removed a single device. :-)
Boeing overcharging the batteries because if they could blame the other guys they would do so. Re-certifying the system is a major time and money sink. By not pointing fingers and acting in concert with the parties involved to provide a solution to a problem they're unwilling or not able to describe.... they smell guilty. Either the whole system was truly under designed or outsourced code wasn't tested as much as much as it should due to a lower criticality.
Aerospace industry politics as usual I guess?
As the incidents happened on the ground it would appear that overdrawing is the problem, not overcharging. A plane's batteries are recharged in-flight by power from the engines. On the ground the batteries are used to power cockpit equipment whilst the plane's engines are not running. Normally on the ground the APU (Auxiliary power unit) is running to provide in-cabin lighting, seat power, AVOD (Audio Visual On Demand) equipment & galley power (etc) and power to the cockpit equipment. Starting the APU draws power from the batteries, much like a car engine. Bleed air from the APU is used to start the main engines as hot air is needed.
In the case of the 787 Boeing, in their infinite wisdom, appear to have thought something like this: "Wow, we have this really cool new battery technology that gives us more power for longer. We use the APU for power on the ground but this uses expensive jet fuel. Why not transfer some of the load from the APU to the batteries whilst on the ground? This is SO COOL!" This is a good idea, but they appear to have the current requirements too close to the endurance limit of the batteries.
Yes. but in an electrical system batteries can also act as electrical accumulator and given that Boeing also refer to the 787 as the plastic electric[1] 'plane so collinsls explanations is still plausible.
The traditional method of charging batteries is to constantly pass current trough them so it is not inconceivable that rapid charge/discharge cycles would cause a cell/battery to overheat.
[1] If you ever get close enough to a 787, i.e. the wing rear spar and the wheel wells, you will notice that there are a lot less hydraulic lines and cables and a lot more electrical harnesses than there are on 'older' aircraft.
The battery design and production and the battery charging system design and production were all outsourced; the former to Yuasa and the latter to Thales. The Thales group working on the charger infamously had their whole building burn down due to a single battery catching fire/////////////experiencing thermal runaway////////whatever during early charger testing some years back. After that, their further charger testing did not use actual batteries, but rather simulated battery load devices that could not burn down the building.
The recent investigations revealed that the final charger design had never actually been fully tested with actual batteries instead of simulated loads.
I don't think Boeing would point the finger at anyone else whether or not they can. Right now they will be mega focussed on trying to twist the facts to their world-view where "no fire occurred" and the 'smoke' was a planned safety release. They need everyone to believe this message so they can recertify the planes and get them back in the air before the airlines start cancelling orders/demanding refunds/suing.
So they describe the non-fire as thermal runaway and the add extra insulation around the cells and enclose it all in a box....
Note too the technical fix of 'wrap the cell in insulation (electrical) tape - sounds like they got Jim the 'leccy in for that one!
I really hope that this does sort the problem, new ways of doing old things (Apple innovations) often have teething trouble, and so far no one has been seriously injured - long may that continue!
Not sure if the electrical compartment is fully climate-controlled, but it doesn't get down to -53C, nor even below freezing IIRC.
The battery cells were already in a metal box; the new metal box will be stronger, and the individual battery cells inside will be separated by thermal insulation so that even if one cell experiences thermal runaway, not enough heat would be transferred to any adjacent cell to trigger its thermal runaway.
In the current design, all the cells were packed together, as it was thought that any one cell could not induce an adjacent cell to overheat (wrong!). Apparently, there were not even individual voltage/current monitors on the cells, just on the whole
Individual voltage monitors per cell is an absolute must!! Without that capability, the cells WILL drift apart over time, and one cell will get overdischarged or overcharged.
NiMH, NiCd and Pb batteries tolerate overcharge (within reason), so those packs ae always slightly overcharged, to ensure that the individual cells stay balanced. LiIon has zero tolerance for both overcharge and overdischarge. When charging, individual cells must all be monitored, if a cell reaches max voltage beforr others, the battery management system must tell the charger to slow down, and also start draining power away from that cell.
Without this, the batterypack is a ticking timebomb.
Except that in the Boston incident, the failure of the battery caused the APU to stop (because the APU control unit is directly powered from the battery bus). This removed power from the fans intended to ventilate the equipment bay and keep fumes out of the cabin.
" no APU, no ETOPS and no economic reason to buy the 787."
I know what that means, as I suspect do most folk that understand what ETOPS means. Most of them (except Boeing spinners) probably agree with it too.
I don't understand the detail well enough to write a brief explanation of it here for someone who doesn't know what ETOPS means. Is the Wikipedia ETOPS article appropriate as a starter?
ETOPS is simply the distance away from the nearest airport an aircraft can fly. The 777 took about a decade to prove it could fly 240minutes from a airport (over sea, siberia etc).
Boeing attempted to have the 787 approved for ETOPS 330 at launch (5.5 hours flying time on one engine). This in an aircraft that has "revolutionary" (aka experimental) electrical systems and carbon fiber body work that has never been tried before.
The 787 has been plague by many issues since launch (faulty undercarriage, fuel leaks, hundreds of battery failures etc), yet the Boeing management will demand its given ETOPS due to its incredible reliability record.
Either that, or zillions of tiny lightnings decided to group together, and form an all-too-powerful chain lightning.
Yes, there are only precious few, who are able to tame such a force.
Even your humble servant has grown lazy over the aeons. Now I'm quite content to spend my days herding the tiny lightnings around their green pastures. Not to mention that people do not object so much.
But sometimes I miss the old days. Great flashes turning nights into days, mighty roars shaking the ground, and of course, that unforgettable smell of the fresh ozone... Ahh.
/mine's the one resembling a Faraday cage/
The statement was just a 'Don't you worry about it - we know what we're doing' pat on the head to the authorities. I hope the FAA have the cojones to stand up to this blithering and see it for what it is - a bandaid solution to a problem that Boeing has admitted not knowing the cause of.
Fire (sorry, shouldn't use the F word) is the ultimate no-no on board an aircraft. Building a big strong box around something that Boeing said could never catch fire in the first place is not an elegant solution.
If these things get recertified, I will not be wanting to experience their 330 minutes ETOPS certification capability in the next few years. I'd rather stick with either a 380 or 777 or ever a 747 for my long haul jaunts.
Note that the icon does not represent fire.
" A manufacturing fault seems to be the reason such an event was able to occur "
Clearly this is not true since (a) it happened on 2 separate planes, so manufacturing must have been REALLY shitty (b) they are doing design changes to solve teh problem, so it was a design fault in teh first place
James, in fact dozens (maybe hundreds) of batteries have had to be replaced on 787s (albeit not all due to self-failure), so something was already known to be going on.
The concern is in fact that manufacturing QC standards were way too low at Yuasa's plant. After the incidents, an advisory group that included folks from the automotive lithium battery sector visited the Yuasa plant and was reportedly shocked that 80% or more of their cells were passing muster, as in the automotive lithium battery plants typical pass rates were closer to 60%.
Maybe Yuasa's plant is that much better than everyone else's, or maybe not.
No manufacturing faults have been found in the 100+ failed batteries. That just another lie from Boeing as nobody can disprove it.
Boeing attitude to safety in shocking, as is their logic. E.g. Only a overcharging event can cause a fire, there was no overcharging therefore there was no fire.
@Mondoman, thanks for the additional info, didn't know they had lots of other batteries replaced. Nevertheless, if it was ONLY a manufacturing issue, surely they would just insist that Yuasa ups their standards. If they need a redesign, that means the original design wasn't good enough (even if the redesign is only to improve the manufacturing process)
And I hope Yuasa's Pb batteries don't explode, my 'bike has a Yuasa battery, and it's located right under my ball!
(1) Who can provide a link to the photos of the batteries and enclosures post-"venting"? I've seen some of them, and it sure looks like more than the venting as described by the Boeing PR spin regurgitated here. The pictures are probably in the PDFs of the official reports, if they're not elsewhere.
(2) Q: Who knows who's been building the safety critical bits of Rolls Royce's aero engine fuel systems (pumps, computers, software, etc) for the last few decades?
A: Lucas. Specifically, Lucas Aerospace and some of its successors, ending up as a company called Aero Engine Controls. As of last year, Rolls Royce own 100% of Aero Engine Controls. Not saying whether this is good or bad (time will tell).
"has stopped short of offering a thorough explanation for just what went wrong" means they haven't a clue.
"something caused the batteries on two 787s to become very hot" is stating the obvious given there was smoke, flames and heat.
"deep discharge” could be a short circuit - they are known to cause 'deep discharges'.
"the venting is a protective measure" means it reduces the chance of a battery acting like a BOMB.
"heat from the cell propagated to other cells and they vented as well. This is a protective mechanism that is designed into the battery cells" now we have unionised batteries - one on fire, now all on fire.
"they leak vaporised electrolyte which looks like smoke" sure, now explain the flames, acrid smoke and scorching.
"systems worked as planned with flight crews notified after smoke detectors worked" is such a stupid statement - why sound the alarm before an alarm condition is reached?
"cannot be considered a “thermal runaway” so just what the hell is all this fire and heat if it isn't runaway? Or did Boeing plan for fires?
For a high tech aircraft manufacturer who expects passengers to entrust their lives to their plastic plane we also expect far more cogent answers than the rubbish muttered the other day.
(Today's NSA word is Acritic. It keeps their computers buzzing, and increases readership)