Cellular Structures for Electric Vehicle Battery Systems: A Critical Review and Design Guidelines

Architected cellular materials are increasingly proposed for electric-vehicle (EV) battery systems as lightweight solutions that can combine crashworthiness, intrusion mitigation and, in some cases, thermal functionality. However, the literature remains fragmented across heterogeneous architectures, metrics and test conditions, which often prevents design-oriented comparison and limits transferability to pack-level implementation. This review consolidates the state of the art on cellular structures for EV battery applications, covering foams, honeycombs, lattice/TPMS architectures and auxetic or bio-inspired concepts. A unified, design-oriented comparative framework is introduced to discuss mechanical performance (e.g., specific energy absorption, peak crushing force, deformation control), thermal considerations and manufacturing–scalability constraints under an EV battery-pack perspective. By explicitly linking cellular architecture selection to pack safety and integration requirements, including limited crush space, joining interfaces, enclosure stiffness and emerging “pack-as-a-structure” concepts, this work translates dispersed results into actionable engineering insights. Finally, decision-oriented guidelines and a selection flowchart are proposed to support early-stage architecture choice and highlight the most critical research gaps, particularly in multiphysics validation, standardized benchmarking and production-ready integration.