Numerical analysis and optimization of thermal performance of lithium battery pack based on air-cooling strategy

Abstract

An effective and robust thermal management system can control the temperature of lithium batteries and maintain the long service life and high performance of the module. In this work, the thermal design and optimization of cylindrical battery packs based on air-cooled thermal management strategies are studied. Lumped model is implemented to investigate the thermophysical characteristics of single cell, and the experimental measurements is used to determine the transient heat generation of cylindrical lithium batteries under different discharge rates. On this basis, the CFD method is used to analyze the temperature of the battery pack, and the heat dissipation performance of the air-cooled heat management system is explored. Finally, different air cooling strategies are investigated by changing the area and position of inlet and outlet to obtain the best cooling scheme. The results indicate that the multi-inlet and multi-outlet structure in this paper can significantly lower the temperature and improve the temper-ture uniformity in the battery pack. A better air-cooling performance can be obtained under the optimal parameter configuration, which will help the design of the air-cooled battery thermal management system.