Thermal performance of lithium-ion batteries applying forced air cooling with an improved aluminium foam heat sink design

Abstract

A lithium-ion battery thermal management system using forced air cooling with open-cell aluminium foam was proposed in this paper. The battery module consists of eight pieces of pouch cell and nine pieces of aluminium foam heat sink. The battery module thermal model was developed to analysis its thermal characteristics. Thermal interaction between battery cells in this model was explored. The effects of porosity and pore density of aluminium foam on the heat dissipation performance at different mass flow rates were investigated. The results show that the thermal interaction between battery cells becomes more obvious after using aluminium foam. Metal foam can significantly reduce battery temperature rise compared with the pure air-cooled system, but it will cause huge flow resistance and pressure loss, which will easily lead to uneven temperature distribution on the battery surface. Additionally, decreasing the porosity of aluminium foam decreases the average surface temperature of batteries, but increases temperature difference. To improve temperature uniformity, the cooling air flow direction, the layout of battery module and the shape of aluminium foam were also studied. Our results showed that the case with quarter inlet width and "T" shape aluminium foam exhibited the most excellent performance among all cases. Despite the mentioned defects, applying aluminium foam is still a promising method in battery thermal management system. And this paper provided a theoretical reference for designing aluminium foam thermal management system in batteries.