Examination of Channel Angles Influence on the Cooling Performance of Air-cooled Thermal Management System of Li-Ion Battery

Abstract

Air-cooled battery thermal management is the most frequent alternative for keeping the battery pack in hybrid electric vehicles and electric vehicles at the proper temperature. In the present study, the flow and thermal distribution in regular Z and U-type flow Battery Thermal Management Systems (BTMS) were optimized by modifying their inlet and outlet channel angles. The cooling performance of the systems was determined based on their flow and thermal fields using a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) approach. The results show that the conventional Z-type flow cooling performance is improved by changing the input channel angle to 150° and the exit channel angle to 120°. The maximum temperature is reduced by 1.6 °C, and the maximum temperature difference is reduced by 3.7 °C, while the power usage is cut by 29%. By keeping the inlet channel angle perpendicular and changing the outlet channel angle to 135°, the cooling effectiveness of the conventional U-type flow BTMS is also increased. The maximum temperature drops by 0.4 °C, the maximum cell temperature difference drops by 1 °C, and its power consumption drops by 11%. The overall results suggest that inlet and outlet channel angles play a significant role in optimization and depend strongly on the flow type of BTMS.