interesting comments in the last 2 posts. A former life saw me as a service-engineer for Medical equipment. (mainly Prem. baby incubators)
We recognised the capacity for abuse and misuse and as far as possible , designs were developed to circumvent "unplanned" "usage"
The saying was, " design to be idiot-proof and it'll be
almost nurse-proof
Now Turin talks of an unorthodox procedure to overcome a major inherent design fault (distortion of Rotor due inadequate provision to dissipate soaked-heat.
(incidentally.SYSENG 68K , the BMW Mini-Cooper also uses a "run-on coolant pump and it was these devices causing unexplained spontaneous combustion of the cars,,,caused a major recall...Deja-vu!)
@ KEESJE. AIUI, the connection/balancing/discharging/monitoring ai all internal in the "battery" , it being a self-contained sub-system.
One therefore makes the assumption that all charge/discharge functions must go via the "charger"which is then a glorified power-supply/filter as seen by the battery. One also assumes the safest way to transfer the data from inside the Battery, to the data-storage within the charger, is simply to superimpose the digital(AC) info on the main cables and filter it off at the charger (destination)
That way, It's impossible to charge/discharge the battery cells without the controller talking to it's interface. any other "secondary-plug" system is, IMO, wide-open to human error as well as adding another load of wires/connectors into the "potential fault" chain.
No doubt these cells
can be used safely in this particular application, but they need to be conservatively used with a much larger safety-margin than they already demonstrate.
Charge/discharge monitoring is, IMO, critical....in the "fuel-door" instance, the batt. should self-disconnect long before it reaches a critical level, just like your cell-phone battery does,- OK, you then have to get a ground-power connection to continue refuelling, but you can then safely restart the APU or a main engine to restore power to the battery-charger (assuming the GPU doesn,t perform this function.)
It needs to be understood that only the "middle" part of the stored energy is actually available for safe use.
Over-discharging effectively destroys the cell. charging to the limit brings a possibility of spontaneous combustion. therefore, like the pilots keep clear of "Coffin Corner" and" Stall" these batteries demand usage in the "safe" part of their envelope.
A design that allows cells to routinely fall below "lockout" level, is ,IMO incompetently and poorly engineered. (Unless it's a deliberate and cynical ploy to sell more batteries
) but no firm would put profit before dependability,would they?