Improved Primary Battery Reliability Via Non-Destructive Evaluation

Reliable and accurate thermal battery nondestructive evaluation during production and as part of pre-acceptance qualification procedures is central to ensuring that the quality of thermal batteries remains high. Current production inspection practices are inadequate because not only batteries with defects continue to enter the stockpile, but also productivity is adversely impacted. In Phase I, we demonstrated that substantial improvements could be made to vision-based and X-ray inspection of thermal batteries. In Phase II, we propose to deliver (1) a prototype system for reliable vision-based inspection that would be integrated into the production flow and (2) an automated X-ray inspection package that will eliminate subjectivity from and substantially accelerate inspection. Thermal battery quality will improve as a result of the developed technologies, thereby reducing the total ownership costs of thermal battery customers.