With the increasing number of electric vehicles, inevitable crash accidents, vibration and foreign objective penetration potentially generate catastrophic consequences such as fire or explosion. Unlike traditional engineering materials or structures, LIBs exhibit multiphysical behaviors including mechanical deformation/failure, thermal conduction, series of electrochemical and chemical reactions, upon mechanical abusive loading. Therefore, developing computational frameworks capable of describing multiphysical behaviors of cylindrical batteries in crash safety design of electric vehicles based on commercially available platform is in pressing need. In this paper, based on the widely used LS-DYNA software platform, a multiphysics model with the comprehensive coupling of mechanical, battery, short-circuit, exothermic and thermal models are established. Models are validated by the in-house designed experiments. Further, parametric studies based on the established model demonstrates that a larger indentor leads to a later onset of internal short circuit (ISC) for LIBs but result in a higher peak battery temperature. On the other hand, an ISC will be triggered early if the compressive loading is applied near the ends of battery cells. This study provides an accessible, fast and accurate computational framework for safety design, assessment and improvement of lithium-ion batteries and electric vehicles in harsh mechanical scenarios. (C) 2019 The Electrochemical Society.