Optimal distribution of the fin structures in a phase change material module for battery thermal management

The low thermal conductivity of phase-change-material (PCM) is the constraint of the further development of battery thermal management (BTM) PCM-cooling technology. Therefore, in order to strengthen the thermal conductivity of PCM and to improve the heat-dissipation capacity of the power battery, the fin with high-thermal-conductivity was adopted as the heat transfer enhancement method of PCM in this paper. The influence of structural-distribution/quantity/material of the fin added into PCM and the convection heat transfer coefficient of shell on the heat-dissipation performance of the power battery were studied by computational-fluid-dynamics (CFD). The results shown that when the in0out0 fins (0 represent the angle between internal and external fins) were added, it has the best heat-dissipation-performance and the maximum temperature of the battery decreased by 5.69 K, comparing with the PCM without fin. In the limited available space, the decrease rate of the maximum battery temperature didn't increase with the increase of the number of fins accordingly. The maximum temperature decrease rate of the battery was the highest when four in0out0 structure fins were added, which was 0.45 %. According to the thermal physical properties of the fin materials and the simulation results, aluminum was the best choice for the fin material. For the convection heat transfer coefficient, the greater the value, the better the battery heat dissipation effect had.