Investigation on the cooling and temperature uniformity of power battery pack based on gradient phase change materials embedded thin heat sinks

Abstract

In order to further increase the temperature uniformity of power battery, a thermal management method based on thin heat sink embedded with PCM was investigated in this paper. The thermophysical property and distribution of PCM are the key factors affecting the thermal management performance. A comparative study on the cooling and homogenization performance of the battery thermal management system under different thermal conductivities, melting temperature and distributions of PCM were explored carefully. The main results show that the maximum temperature and temperature standard deviation (STD) of the battery can be decreased with the function of heat sink embedded with PCM. Comparing to air cooling method, the maximum temperature and STD of the battery can be decreased by about 11.2% and 78.3% at 600 s, respectively. The influence of thermal conductivity can be neglected. Lowering the melting temperature and increasing latent heat can reduce the maximum temperature and STD. In additional, it is found that the distribution of PCM with different melting temperature or latent heat can obviously affect the maximum temperature and temperature uniformity of the battery. It could be a useful way to optimize the thermal management performance.