Lithium-iron phosphate batteries are widely used in energy storage systems and
electric vehicle for their favorable safety profiles and high reliability. The
designing of an efficient cooling system is an effective means of ensuring
normal battery operation, improving cycle life, and preventing thermal runaway.
In this paper, we proposed a forced-convection air cooling structure aiming at
uniform temperature distribution and reducing the maximum temperature. The
initial step was constructing a heating model for a single LiFeO4 battery. A
source function was derived from the experimental data, which described the
variation in heating power with discharge depth. This function was then used to
create a dynamic loading of the battery heating model. Subsequently, a
three-dimensional model of a 7-series and 2-parallel battery pack was
constructed. Seven schemes were designed on the basis of the traditional
Z-shaped structure, with the position of the air inlet and outlet altered. The
analysis found that the inlet and outlet positions affect the temperature of the
battery pack, and the optimal positional scheme can control the temperature rise
at the end of battery discharge within 18.54 K. On this basis, we added some
disturbing structures near the high-temperature battery, which reduced the
maximum temperature and maximum temperature difference by 4.32 K and 5.45 K,
respectively. This proves to be a highly efficient cooling structure, which
realizes the improvement of the cooling effect on the basis of not changing the
external structure of the battery. In addition to optimizing the structure, we
also investigated the effects of six different temperature levels and five
different air inlet velocities on the performance of the air-cooling system. The
results showed that both lowering the air temperature and increasing the air
velocity have a positive effect on the cooling performance.