Analysis of Cooling Effectiveness and Temperature Uniformity in a Battery Pack for Cylindrical Batteries

Abstract

In this paper, techniques to improve cooling and temperature uniformity in a simple battery pack are examined. Four battery pack configurations are developed. In the first configuration, an inlet plenum is added to a simple battery pack. In the second configuration, jet inlets are incorporated along with the inlet plenum, and in the third configuration, multiple vortex generators are added in addition to the inlet plenum. Finally, in the fourth configuration, an inlet plenum, jet inlets, and multiple vortex generators are incorporated into the battery pack. The results conclude that by adding inlet plenum, multiple vortex generators, and jet inlets in the same configuration, significant improvements are observed. The results also show that the maximum temperature of the battery pack is reduced by ~5%, and the temperature difference between the maximum temperature and the minimum temperature exhibited by the battery pack is reduced by 21.5%. Moreover, there is a ~16% improvement in the temperature uniformity of a single cell.

Keywords

• battery thermal management
• forced air passive cooling
• computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis
• cylindrical lithium-ion (Li-ion) cells
• vortex generators
• jet inlets