Efficient battery thermal management system design to ensure fast charging in extreme cold conditions

Abstract

In extreme cold conditions, there are negative consequences on battery life due to extremely slower rate of chemical reactions, resulting in lower charging rates. Therefore, an efficient battery thermal management system is required to ensure temperature optimization is low which may also result in charging. In best of authors understanding, there is hardly any research being carried out in this direction. In this paper, an Intelligent Optimization framework combined with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) shall be proposed to optimize the heating method accuracy so as to maintain the uniform and desired temperature across the battery for ensuring smooth and quick charging. Battery pack model shall be designed in CFD platform and the thermal analysis shall be carried for given set of conditions (such as constant heat source, air flow rate, air temperature). Based on the obtained set of analysis samples, a model shall be formulated illustrating relationship between the minimum temperature output and the inputs (air flow rate, air temperature, etc.). The minimum temperature output shall be maximized using NSGA II so as to determine the optimum set of input conditions (air flow rate, air temperature, etc.). The battery pack simulation revealed that thermal system utilizing a liquid medium is more effective than air medium. Future research directions shall be discussed in the end.