Numerical Study of Thermal Management of Lithium-Ion Battery Pack Using Liquid Cooling

This paper deals with the thermal management of battery cells with liquid cooling to maintain equal temperature among all the cells in the battery pack. This study starts with thermal analysis of a single battery cell with numerical analysis and validates its results with experimental analysis. By using the symmetry condition of the battery pack, six cells in a row with an aluminum block kept between two cells are considered. The two faces of the aluminum block were kept in contact with cells in the shape of an arc which is the same as the arc of a cell in order to get more heat transfer area. These aluminum blocks are penetrated by five circular channels in order to flow coolant and hinged with the channel. Numerical simulation has performed in Ansys Fluent software to get temperature distribution graphs of all six cells to find the maximum temperature of cells. The numerical results are validated with previous literature followed by thermal analysis of battery pack with different channel sizes, their shape, and changing coolant from water to ethylene glycol. Results of this study include a comparison of thermal behavior of battery cells at different conditions by using temperature, heat transfer, and pump work parameters in order to get the optimized design of thermal management system with liquid cooling for better thermal performance.