Experimental investigation on cooling of prismatic battery cells through cell integrated features

Abstract

Lithium-ion batteries are sensitive to temperature changes over their life. High operational temperatures can negatively affect the battery and lead to capacity fade and lifespan reduction. Air-cooled thermal management systems are widely used in electrified vehicles. A novel air-cooled battery design is introduced. Aluminum fin cooling features are directly integrated onto prismatic cells rather than established by the use of an auxiliary polymer component. When the cells are arranged in a battery array, the on-cell features generate cooling channels. A forced-convection testbed is used to determine thermal management performance. Shear resistance experiments are used to measure the mechanical resistance of the battery cell assemblies. The study demonstrates that a configuration with parallel channel cell-wall integrated fins recovers the performance of the system with the standard polymer space but provides a 20% improvement in temperature uniformity under fan power control. This configuration, however, lacks mechanical resistance in the assembly. A poka-yoke based configuration with tapered channels enhanced by secondary fins provides mechanical resistances and also performs better in both flow and fan power control. This configuration maintains the cell maximum temperature as the assembly via polymer spacers but improves the temperature uniformity by 50%.