Illinois Rocstar has been awarded a new NASA Phase II SBIR to produce the “Integrated Computational System for Electrochemical Device Design and Simulation,” currently called ICED. During the Phase I project, major portions of a base, open-source, easily extensible battery modeling system have been developed with a modern, modular architecture and methods. This work sets the stage for innovative and new advances during the Phase II project. In addition to the new modules and architecture built by Illinois Rocstar, we have identified a number of available tools that fit well with our vision of the final ICED product. Open-source tools from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory CAEBAT project and proprietary, but government-funded tools from the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) will be modularized and brought into the ICED system, ensuring that the Phase II value we bring to NASA is focused on developing new capabilities, while assembling a tool that contains the most advanced battery modeling capabilities available.
It has been the experience of Illinois Rocstar that advanced science and modeling tools are rarely accepted by industry without (i) support behind them and (ii) ease of installation and use. We have encountered numerous industry and government entities where building source code is just not possible within their organizations. Thus, we are focusing on bringing scientific software to industry in forms where commercial-quality, easily installed, and graphically-interfaced tools are needed by those who have no interest in developing software, and providing open-source source code to those that want it. This approach is value-added to M&S tools that are currently pure science code (such as those from INL) or that have attempted to, but not completed addressed ease of use (such as those form CAEBAT). We bring a commercially-supported environment to the table for them, which is a service that the national laboratories cannot provide themselves.
