Abstract
The growing need for wearable devices, fitness accessories and biomedical equipment has led to the upsurge in research and development of thin flexible battery research and development. The current state of art wearable electronics products being developed in several fields require installation of power sources in different configurations and at times require the battery to undergo mechanical folding during product operation. This requires the product batteries to robustly withstand the imposed mechanical stresses during use along with the other desirable characteristics attributed to the power source such as high C-rate capability, high capacity and low capacity degradation rate. Works that explore the effects of static and dynamic folding on li-ion power sources is limited and oftentimes doesn’t adhere to definite test protocols resulting in non-standardized experimental data that can’t be applied to real-life product scenarios. Specifically, the effect of fold diameter on the battery state of health degradation when subjected to both static and dynamic folding is not yet completely explored. Present study aims to address this gap in the literature by investigating the effect of varying the fold diameter is both static (U-flex-to-install) and dynamic (dynamic U-fold) tests. Four different values of fold diameters have been chosen for experimentation and to study its effect during the aforementioned tests. Multiple samples have been tested for a given test condition so as to generate high fidelity data. Ultimately, a regression model developed previously has been augmented with the results generated in the current study.
Dynamic folding of origami by exploiting asymmetric bi-stability