Japan's transportation safety authority has been unable to identify the cause of lithium-ion battery fires that plagued Boeing 787 Dreamliners in 2013, leading to a three-month grounding of the fleet. One plane parked in Boston experienced a battery fire; another was forced to land in Japan because of battery problems, prompting the Japanese authority to act. (Visit here for more background.)
The Wall Street Journal reports today that, according to Japanese investigators, severe damage to one battery that caught fire made failure analysis difficult. One possible cause is deposition, in which lithium metal in cold temperatures (the problems occurred in January) can form needlelike objects, although the investigators said that factor alone was unlikely to cause such extensive damage.
According to Forbes, “Boeing redesigned the battery made by Kyoto-based GS Yuasa Corp. before restarting 787 flights, with no battery-related groundings by regulators since then.”
Forbes quotes Norihiro Goto, Japan Transport Safety Board chief, as saying, “Looking at how flights have been going, I’d say the problem has been sorted. We may not have found the cause, but there is already a working solution.”
See related article, “Fire Protection Engineers Address Li-ion Safety.”
