Yanbin Zhao’s scientific contributions

Aiming at the dilemma that most laboratory data-driven diagnostic and prognostic methods cannot be applied to field batteries in passenger cars and energy storage systems, this paper proposes a method to bridge field data and laboratory data using machine learning. Only two field real impedances corresponding to a medium frequency and a high frequency are needed to predict laboratory real impedance curve, laboratory charge/discharge curve, and laboratory relaxation curve. Based on the predicted laboratory data, laboratory data-driven methods can be used for field battery diagnosis and prognosis. Compared with the field data-driven methods based on massive historical field data, the proposed method has the advantages of higher accuracy, lower cost, faster speed, readily available, and no use of private data. The proposed method is tested using two open-source datasets containing 249 NMC cells. For a test set containing 76 cells, the mean absolute percentage errors of laboratory real impedance curve, charge curve, and discharge curve prediction results are 0.85%, 4.72%, and 2.69%, respectively. This work fills the gap between laboratory data-driven diagnostic and prognostic methods and field battery applications, making all laboratory data-driven methods applicable to field battery diagnosis and prognosis. Furthermore, this work overturns the fixed path of developing field battery diagnostic and prognostic methods based on massive field historical data, opening up new research and breakthrough directions for field battery diagnosis and prognosis.

Accelerated life testing (ALT) can significantly reduce the economic, time, and labor costs of life testing in the process of equipment, device, and material research and development (R&D), and improve R&D efficiency. This paper proposes a performance characterization data prediction (PCDP) method and a life prediction-driven ALT (LP-ALT) method to accelerate the life test of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). The PCDP method can accurately predict different PCD using only four impedances (real and imaginary) corresponding to a high frequency and a medium frequency, greatly shortening the measurement time of offline PCD and reducing the difficulty of life testing. The test results on an open source life test dataset containing 42 PEMFCs show that compared with the determination coefficient (R^2) results of predicted aging indicators, including limiting current, total mass transport resistance, and electrochemically active surface area, and crossover current, obtained based on the measured PCD, the R^2 results of predicted aging indicators based on the predicted PCD is only reduced by 0.05, 0.05, 0.06, and 0.06, respectively. The LP-ALT method can shorten the life test time through early life prediction. Test results on the same open-source life test dataset of PEMFCs show that the acceleration ratio of the LP-ALT method can reach 30 times under the premise of ensuring that the minimum R^2 of the prediction results of different aging indicators, including limiting current, total mass transport resistance, and electrochemically active surface area, is not less than 0.9. Combining the different performance characterization data predicted by the PCDP method and the life prediction of the LP-ALT method, the diagnosis and prognosis of PEMFCs and their components can be achieved.

Prognosis and diagnosis play an important role in accelerating the development of lithium-ion batteries, as well as reliable and long-life operation. In this work, we answer an important question: What is the minimum amount of data required to extract features for accurate battery prognosis and diagnosis? Based on the first principle, we successfully extracted the best two-point feature (BTPF) for accurate battery prognosis and diagnosis using the fewest data points (only two) and the simplest feature selection method (Pearson correlation coefficient). The BTPF extraction method is tested on 820 cells from 6 open-source datasets (covering five different chemistry types, seven manufacturers, and three data types). It achieves comparable accuracy to state-of-the-art features in both prognosis and diagnosis tasks. This work challenges the cognition of existing studies on the difficulty of battery prognosis and diagnosis tasks, subverts the fixed pattern of establishing prognosis and diagnosis methods for complex dynamic systems through deliberate feature engineering, highlights the promise of data-driven methods for field battery prognosis and diagnosis applications, and provides a new benchmark for future studies.