Design and optimization of air-cooled heat dissipation structure of an on-board supercapacitor box

Abstract

An effective nonlinear optimization method is proposed for heat dissipation structure of the supercapacitor box in this paper. Supercapacitor has been widely used in modern tramcar for its fast charging and discharging, long cycle life and environmental protection. However, the large amount of heat generated during operation is difficult to be emitted, which hinders its further application. The existing studies mainly focus on the simulation of heat dissipation structure of lithium-ion battery pack, and there is relatively few literatures on simulation of supercapacitor module. This paper takes supercapacitor box of a tramcar as the research object. Firstly, a finite element model for heat dissipation is established. Then the heat dissipation characteristics are simulated. The spacings of the supercapacitor modules along x and y directions are optimized. The results show that the cooling effect is the best when the x-direction spacing is 120 mm, and y-direction spacing is 30 mm. The peak temperature is 312.22 K with a reduction of 1.5 %, and the temperature difference is only 3.24 K with a reduction of 12.4 %. Because the heat generation of supercapacitor modules is highly nonlinear, the mutation theory is used to optimize the heat dissipation structure. The results show that the best cooling effect is achieved when the air inlet is asymmetric and the out inlet is symmetric. The peak temperature is 310.15 K with a reduction of 2.2 %, and the temperature difference is 1.73 K with a reduction of 53.2 %. The results of this study could provide a scientific basis for the design of heat dissipation structure for the supercapacitor box.