Performance and Abuse Testing of 5 Year Old Low Rate and Medium Rate Lithium Thionyl Chloride Cells

Most cells survived the 3 amp (A) over-discharge at room temperature for 2 hours. The cell that failed was the LTC-114 after high rate discharge of 500 mA similar to the results of the 1 A over-discharge test. Most cells opened during 0.05 Ohm short circuit test without incident but three LTC-111 cells exploded apparently due to a lack of a thermal cutoff switch. The LTC-114 cells exposed to a hard short of 0.05 Ohms recovered but the LTC-114 cells exposed to a soft short of 1 Ohm did not. This is probably due to the activation of a resetable fuse during a hard short. Fresh cells tend to survive exposure to higher temperatures than cells previously discharged at high rate (1 Amp). LTC-111 cells tend to vent at lower temperatures than the all LTC-114 cells and the LTC-115 cells that were previously discharged at rates exceeding 1 Amp.