We’ve got smart cars, a smart grid…and now a smart nail. Jeff Dahn and his colleagues at Dalhousie University have added some intelligence to the lowly steel nail in order to improve penetration testing on Li-ion batteries.

The team described its project in the current issue of the Journal of Power Sources. An abstract:

Nail penetration is one of the common safety tests used to simulate some aspects of an internal short circuit event in a Li-ion cell. The test is usually performed with an ordinary steel nail, and the only data normally gathered has been a simple pass/fail result depending on whether or not the cell emitted smoke or flame, along with a thermocouple on the surface of the cell.

The smart nail has been developed to allow the collection of temperature versus time data at the point of nail penetration. This nail, in conjunction with a thermocouple on the cell surface and tabs on the ends to measure voltage, should provide new insights into the behavior of cells during this type of abuse testing, and aid in the development of safer Li-ion cell chemistries.

Now if someone could only develop a smart hammer…

Source: Green Car Congress