VALIDATION OF THERMAL MODELING OF UNSTEADY HEAT SOURCE GENERATED IN A RECTANGULAR LITHIUM-ION POWER BATTERY

Lithium-ion battery is a promising solution for the energy storage in vehicular applications. However, the improper temperature resulted in adverse effects (including performance degradation, thermal runaway, and nonuniformity temperature) should be accurately evaluated before the battery is in production. Therefore, the aim of this work is to build and validate the unsteady heat-generation modeling for a rectangular power battery. The discharge rates of power battery at 1, 3, 5, and 7C (C-rate) are employed, which correspond to the time-dependent heat generations. The modeling results show that the general trend is: as the discharge rate increases, the relative discrepancy between the simulated and experimental battery surface temperature decreases. It is found that the max relative discrepancies are varying from ~ 30% (1C) to ~ 15% (3, 5, and 7C), and the relative errors mostly lie in the bandwidth of ± 10% when the discharge rates are not less than 3C. Therefore, the verified model of power battery, especially for the higher discharge rates (≥ 3C), can be well used to perform the thermal management and to evaluate the cell thermal performances.