Experimental and numerical approach for analyzing thermal behaviors of a prismatic hard-cased lithium-ion battery

Pinpointing the thermal behaviors of lithium-ion battery cells is a premier work for the thermal design of vehicular traction battery pack. An experimental and numerical approach is developed in this paper to study the thermal behaviors of a prismatic hard-cased cell. A computational model of considering heat loss to analyze the cell heat generation rate was first established, correspondingly a measurement method was presented to reveal the cell heat-generating performance depending on the cell's temperature evolution of each thermogenic part. A thermal model of considering the cell's detailed physical specifications was established to numerically analyze the cell's thermal profile. The results show that there exists an excellent effectiveness in present characterization technique to the cell thermal behaviors. The cell heat generation rate quadratically increases with ascending discharge rate and lower temperature. Effects of lugs and housing on the cell thermal distribution are exceed-ingly. The cell's lower part temperature is higher when the cell discharges at the low-rate, however, this phe-nomenon will be opposite at the high-rate discharge. The present approach has higher cost-advantage to pinpoint the thermal behaviors of the prismatic hard-cased cells when comparing with several recent studies which using the costly calorimeters.

Automated summary

An experimental and numerical approach was used to study the thermal behaviors of a prismatic hard-cased cell, and a computational model was established to analyze the cell's thermal profile. The results indicate that the cell's heat generation rate increases quadratically with discharge rate and is influenced by temperature, with the lower part temperature varying depending on discharge rate.