Here's an insightful interview with Cory from Munro. Timestamped for when Cory talks about the sheer forces needed to open the structural pack and how impressed they were calling concrete and the cells are rebar as an analogy. Insane and funny, Tesla making benchers life difficult by intelligent design.
To look at it as concrete, with the cells as rebar, is really too much simplification from Munro.
I do not blame them however, the resemblance is too nice to resist.
A short technical consideration.
As concrete is very good at resisting compressive forces, but pretty bad at resisting tensile forces, rebar is placed in areas where tensile forces will occur.
Without any complex calculations, my estimate is that the main mechanical function of batteries in the battery pack is not that of rebar, but of something that is able to take both tensile ànd compressive forces.
The bending and torsional strength and rigidity of the pack will for a great part be derived from the outer layer, so the metal top and bottom.
For the optimal working of this the cells must be glued with great strength to the outer metal layers, so the fact that these layers are difficult to remove is logical.
It shows that the engineers at Tesla not only understand their concepts of how cells are working electrically, but also have good knowledge how to apply mechanical engineering to them.
And most importantly: proof that the electrical and mechanical engineers
are working together.
Now, why am I not surprised by all of this?
www.reuters.com
