Topology Optimization of Functionally Graded Structure for Thermal Management of Cooling Plate

Abstract

The fast charge and discharge of a battery will significantly increase the overall temperature and thermal difference of the battery, which will further affect the working performance and safety of the battery. Therefore, a heat–fluid coupling topology optimization pipeline for developing radiation performance of the cooling plate is presented to ensure the thermal homogeneity of the battery in this paper. First, the Brinkman penalty model is utilized to construct the solid and fluid structures. Then, a local volume constraint is introduced to create the lattice structure to reduce the temperature difference of the cooling plate. Furthermore, a functionally graded lattice structure via a variable influence radius is presented to improve the radiation performance of the cooling plate when the thermal load is uneven. Numerical experiments are carried out to evaluate the performance of the presented methods on the optimization of the cooling plate, which indicates that the designed cooling plate by the proposed method improves the radiation performance when compared against a traditional straight channel and a SIMP-based optimal design.

Keywords

• cooling plate
• topology optimization
• thermal management
• heat–fluid coupling
• lattice structure