Brake systems of trains, trucks, and further large vehicles commonly do not contain battery cells. Due to automatisation, todays fail-safe systems will become fail-operational, which requires a reliable electrical power supply. An intelligent battery system developed at Knorr-Bremse introduces new components and innovative technology to the brake system. These introduce new physical phenomena that need to be simulated as part of the components development. Due to the complexity of the new system, simulating every component in the same code is particularly challenging. The coupling library preCICE allows simulating each component separately, in a black-box, partitioned multi-physics simulation.

This master's thesis talk will show what was achieved during the first phase of the project. In cooperation with the company, a simulation model is set up, which aims at approximating the thermal behavior of the system. As a first step, a simulation model describing the thermal behavior of a single battery cell is developed. During the thesis project, this model is implemented using FEniCS and preCICE. First simlation results are produced, but also limitations are found. Furthermore, the talk will discuss possible next steps for the project towards simulating a complete battery system.