Numerical study on ultrathin wide straight flow channel cold plate for Li-ion battery thermal management

Abstract

Complex channel can enhance heat transfer performance of cold plate. Therefore, until now the research on straight channel cold plate used in Li-ion Battery Thermal Management System (BTMS) is very few, in which narrow straight channel is focused on. However, pressure drop of straight channel is much lower than of complex channel. Thus, an ultrathin Wide straight flow channel Cold Plate (WCP) is designed, investigated and compared with representative complex channel cold plates based on a novel parameter total inlet driving force instead of commonly used mass flow rate. Results indicates WCP shows excellent comprehensive performance. Compared with Serpentine, Bifurcated and U-turn channel cold plates, the maximum temperature of WCP decreases by a maximum of 4.31 K, 19.31 K, 45.50 K, respectively, while the standard deviation of temperature of WCP decreases by a maximum of 47.51 %, 45.40 %, 65.08 %, respectively. The better performance of WCP is achieved with less power consumption. Besides, WCP with lateral channel and wide channel width shows better performance than WCP with longitudinal channel and narrow channel width. Considering the processing difficulty of WCP is obviously lower than that of complex channel, if ultrathin WCP is popularized, the performance of BTMS can undoubtedly be significantly improved.