Investigation on thermal performance and pressure loss of the fluid cold-plate used in thermal management system of the battery pack

Abstract

For poor high-temperature performance of power battery utilized in electric vehicles, a battery thermal management system (BTMS) functioned as reducing battery’s temperature is indispensable. This work designs a serpentine-channel cold plate as cooling unit of fluid BTMS, and a parameterized U-tube representing a part of serpentine-channel in cold plate is created. A thermal resistance model, as well as an objection function f1 based on it, is developed to characterize thermal performance of cold plate. This study using theories of friction loss and excess loss defines a pressure loss model of cold plate based on the parameterized U-tube. After a series of simulations performed on different U-tube with varying structural parameters, combining with pressure loss model, objective function of pressure loss f2 is obtained. By calculating f1 and f2, the laws of thermal performance with pressure loss and the optimum structure of the serpentine-channel cold plate can be obtained. This work provides a simple way to design the structure of the fluid cold-plate BTMS with optimum thermal performance and minimum pressure loss.