A comparative study of cooling schemes for laminated lithium-ion batteries

Abstract

The thermal characteristics of batteries in electric vehicles are important for the vehicle performance and safety. In this work, various battery thermal management methods for laminated lithium-ion batteries are evaluated by experiments and numerical simulations. First, a simulation scheme is proposed and verified by the results of the experiments conducted in this study. Then, five thermal management methods, including air natural convection, natural or forced convection with fins sandwiched between battery cells, forced convection with slotted fins, and natural convection with fins and phase change material (PCM) are numerically investigated. The results show that 3- mm thick copper fins greatly improve the cooling effect. At low discharge rates, natural convection with fins meets the cooling requirements. At high discharge rates, forced convection with fins or natural convection with fins and PCM is necessary to meet the cooling requirements. By replacing the copper fins with aluminum fins, the fin thickness should be increased by 1 mm to meet the cooling requirements, while the battery pack total weight is decreased by 41%, indicating that aluminum has potential in battery thermal management systems in electric vehicles.