Effects of circumferential fin on cooling performance improvement of forced air-cooled battery pack

Abstract

In demand for clean energy sources, batteries have a vital role to play. Batteries are the heart of many electrical energy storage systems, as in electric vehicles (EVs). The high internal heat generation from a battery is the main hindrance to battery performance and safety. The high-temperature environment impacts performance; therefore, maintaining the battery temperature within desired limits is essential. In this work, we focus on the increasing effectivity of forced air cooling for high-capacity batteries at high discharge rates, decreasing auxiliary power consumption without compromising the compactness of the battery pack. The novelty of this work is that we have developed a hybrid BTMS consisting of circumferential fins and forced air cooling. Using a circumferential fin clad to the cell body has the advantage of increasing the surface area of the battery pack so that the ability of air to extract heat from the battery pack is improved and the auxiliary power consumption is reduced. The experiments use thin circumferential fins of 0.5 mm thickness mounted on cell bodies and discharged at various rates. The numerical model has been developed and tested using ANSYS FLUENT software. Using a single circumferential fin (Model 1) improves cooling performance by 3.14 %, and using three circumferential fins (Model 2) improves cooling performance by 7.32 % in the natural convection mode compared to the uncooled model. The improvement achieved in forced air cooling with a velocity of 2 m/s and three circumferential fins cooling performance is improved by 18.71 %. It is observed that using fins, the overall increase in weight of the system is by 3.58 %.