Due to an increasing number of hybrid and electric vehicles in traffic the safety of battery packages as well as of fuel cells becomes more and more interesting. It is another reason to develop appropriate safety ideas to protect all traffic participants and rescue teams of possible threats. In order to reach high safety levels for possible accidents very hard cases protect the high voltage systems or fuel cells in cars. To meet the future safety requirements those housings are subject to various safety tests.

To point out some key requirements for the testing procedures the approach of the FaSeA study has to be continued with the focus on energy levels depending on the installation location of batteries or fuel cells. The aim of this publication is the design and development of a well defined 3-dimensional deformation energy model, which can be used to specify the testing requirements for future battery and fuel cell development or testing.

The model is designed on the basis of the German-In- Depth-Accident-Study (GIDAS) database, which contains about 20.000 deformed cars including the crash energies as a result of a detailed reconstruction of every single accident.

These deformations are then used to form a 3- dimensional-deformation-frequency-model using a similar method like the FaSeA project. After designing this deformation frequency model all deformations and crash energies of the reconstruction are being merged in the energy model. As a last step the energy model will be used to explain some example fuel cells or batteries regarding their installation location.

The paper will provide a better understanding for the development and the design of battery packages or fuel cells. It will also explain a method for specifying battery package and fuel cell test requirements depending on the vehicle type and the installation location.