Lithium Battery Thermal Management Based on Lightweight Stepped-Channel Liquid Cooling

Abstract This study proposes a stepped-channel liquid-cooled battery thermal management system based on lightweight. The impact of channel width, cell-to-cell lateral spacing, contact height, and contact angle on the effectiveness of the thermal control system (TCS) is investigated using numerical simulation. The weight sensitivity factor is adopted to evaluate the effect of TCS weight (mTCS) on the maximum temperature (Tmax) of battery pack. Results suggest that the channel width plays the most critical role, followed by cell-to-cell lateral spacing and contact angle, while the contact height has minimal influence. Four parameters that affect the thermal balance performance of battery pack, including the number of channels, and baffles, baffle angle, and coolant inlet velocity, are presented using orthogonal experiment. Results indicate that the number of channels and baffle angle have a significant influence on the thermal balance of battery pack, while thermal performance is largely insensitive to coolant inlet velocity and the number of baffles. Based on the analysis stated in this work, an improved design of the TCS is presented that reduces weight by 54.08% while increasing Tmax only by 2.52 K.