A Numerical Investigation of the Thermal Performances of an Array of Heat Pipes for Battery Thermal Management

A comparative numerical study has been conducted on the thermal performance of a heat pipe cooling system considering several influential factors such as the coolant flow rate, the coolant inlet temperature, and the input power. A comparison between numerical data and results available in the literature has demonstrated that our numerical procedure could successfully predict the heat transfer performance of the considered heat pipe cooling system for a battery. Specific indicators such as temperature, heat flux, and pressure loss were extracted to describe the characteristics of such a system. On the basis of the distributions of the temperature ratio of the battery surface, together with the heat flux and the streamlines around the heat pipe condenser, we conclude that the low disturbance of the coolant is the cause of the temperature gradient along the fluid flow direction.