A Y-Type Air-Cooled Battery Thermal Management System with a Short Airflow Path for Temperature Uniformity

Abstract

A Y-type air-cooled structure has been proposed to improve the heat dissipation efficiency and temperature uniformity of battery thermal management systems (BTMSs) by reducing the flow path of air. By combining computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods, the influence of the depths of the distribution and convergence plenums on the airflow velocity through battery cells was analyzed to improve heat dissipation efficiency. Adjusting the width of the first and ninth cooling channels can change the air velocity of these two channels, thereby improving the temperature uniformity of the BTMS. Further discussion was conducted regarding the influences of inlet and outlet depths. When the inlet width and outlet width were 20 mm, the maximum temperature and maximum temperature difference of the Y-type BTMS were 39.84 °C and 0.066 °C at a discharge rate of 2.5 °C, respectively; these temperatures were 1.537 °C (3.68%) and 0.059 °C (47.2%) lower than those of the T-type model. Meanwhile, the energy consumption of the sample also decreased by 13.1%. The results indicate that the heat dissipation performance of the proposed Y-type BTMS was improved, achieving excellent temperature uniformity, and the energy consumption was also reduced.