Automotive Engineering - January/February 2021 - 3

SAE STANDARDS NEWS
SAE J3178 Information Report for battery adhesives, sealants available

n late Spring 2020, SAE International released SAE J3178 - Adhesives, Sealants, and
Heat Transfer Materials in Battery Systems: A
Primer on Materials, Applications, and EndUse Performance Requirements. The 44-page
Information Report offers an introduction to the
use of adhesives, sealants and heat-transfer materials (HTMs) for battery systems.
Adhesives, sealants and HTMs play a pivotal
role in the assembly and performance of battery
systems for mobility applications. Proper selection of such materials from the cell to the pack
level is vital for achieving high-throughput manufacturing and for effectively and safely managing mechanical, environmental and thermal
loads in the end product.
What's more, serviceability and global regulatory requirements must be considered during
the selection process.
SAE J3178 introduces the basic concepts and
properties of these specialized materials and the
roles they serve in battery systems. Specifically,
Section 4 provides a brief overview of the common chemistries used to formulate adhesives,
sealants and HTMs for battery systems. Relative
performance characteristics coupled with handling, environmental, and recyclability aspects
are highlighted.
Sections 5 through 7 of the report provide a
deeper review of the three types of products.
Material definitions are provided along with details of subclasses, noteworthy formulation constituents, and pertinent industrially accepted
test methods. Section 8 is devoted to educating
the reader on how the materials are dispensed
in a manufacturing setting.
Tim Fornes, one of the chairs of SAE's Battery
Systems Adhesives, Sealants, and Heat Transfer
Materials Committee, talked with Automotive
Engineering about J3178. " I think the report
does a good job of really opening up a lot of
information that people just don't get because
of proprietary reasons, " he said. " A lot of people
who are competing against one another collaborated in a way to open up that information to
the public; it is really a good thing. "
Initiated in 2018, the committee aimed to lay
the groundwork for those seeking education in
adhesive, sealants and transfer materials with
the emphasis on battery systems. Fornes said

AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING

Jennifer
Shuttleworth
Associate Editor
Jennifer.Shuttleworth
@sae.org

Competitors
collaborated
to create
a report
that opens
up a lot of
information to
those seeking
education
in these
specialized
materials.

the committee set out to hit things from two
different perspectives. " One was a perspective
from a supplier. Suppliers are often dealing with
the challenge of not knowing enough about the
application, right? So, he or she really needs to
craft the right ease of sealant or heat-transfer
material to meet the design specifications of
that given application. "
He continued, " Typically, it can be challenging
to have a dialogue between the end user and
supplier. You're often dealing with throwing
things over the wall and you get some feedback.
So, we had that perspective - and then we had
the opposite perspective where we have the end
user who knows a lot about the application but
doesn't know much about these materials that
go into their application and what are the layers
of those materials to affect their design. "
The SAE J3178 document marries those two
perspectives, Fornes said, in a way where anyone who is relatively new to the area can read it
and have a pretty good understanding of what it
takes to create these different types of materials
used in battery systems.
In the report, the committee consolidated
many ASTM and ISO standards that are used to
characterize these various materials. " That's
something you just don't get at all, really, in a
textbook or with your training at work, " he said.
" We've gotten all these experts and we've created numerous tables of valuable characterization [standards] documents that are recognized
worldwide that are used for these materials that
battery manufacturers are dealing with on a daily basis. That's just invaluable. "
So is the time saved, thanks to the amount of
information aggregated into one concise form,
Fornes reasoned.
For a copy of J3178, visit www.sae.org/standards/content/j3178_202005/.
The SAE Battery Systems Adhesives, Sealants,
and Heat Transfer Materials Committee also is in
search of experts in the field of polymeric materials
as it relates to the creation, dispensing and end-use
applications within the realm of battery systems.
More information can be found on the SAE
website: https://connection.sae.org/volunteeropportunities/volunteer-opportunity-details?Volun
teerOpportunityKey=7eb1e312-7b72-403e-a4cc175619fe2190.

January/February 2021 3

http://www.sae.org/standards/content/j3178_202005/ https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__connection.sae.org_volunteeropportunities_volunteer-2Dopportunity-2Ddetails-3FVolunteerOpportunityKey-3D7eb1e312-2D7b72-2D403e-2Da4cc-2D175619fe2190&d=DwMFAw&c=zQLjxGaFENyz7VqOLRV_eQ&r=o5L2XDHmD790pJzBkzg0n0OKbAFiMcDYDJ77vay5YlE&m=76aK-d6XQp_2oz-2L-eUn2FV-uv_xajEDvtnxJwXH2I&s=oTmDa_6-vzQKcKeWpo_llt5CFHC3eGpRF4F9WTZZgGI&e

Automotive Engineering - January/February 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Automotive Engineering - January/February 2021