Investigation on Battery Thermal Management Based on Enhanced Heat Transfer Disturbance Structure within Mini-Channel Liquid Cooling Plate

The battery thermal management system plays an important role in the safe operation of a lithium-ion battery system. In this paper, a novel liquid cooling plate with mini-channels is proposed and is improved with disturbance structures. First, an accurate battery heat generation model is established and verified by experiments. The error is less than 4%, indicating the heat generation power is reliable. Then, five designs are proposed first to determine the suitable number of disturbance structures, and plan 3 with five disturbance structures shows a satisfying performance in heat dissipation and flow field. Moreover, four layout plans are proposed, namely uniform, interlaced, thinning, and gradually denser distribution. Results show that plan 5 (uniform) achieves the best performance: the maximum average temperature is 36.33 degrees C and the maximum average temperature difference is 0.16 degrees C. At last, the orthogonal experiment and range analysis are adopted to optimize the structure parameters. Results show that the best combination is space between adjacent disturbance structures d1 = 20 mm, length d2 = 5 mm, width d3 = 1.5 mm, and tilt angle beta = 60 degrees.

Automated summary

In this paper, a novel liquid cooling plate with mini-channels is proposed and improved, and the structure parameters are optimized. Experimental results show that this liquid cooling plate can effectively dissipate heat and has good flow field performance. The best combination of structure parameters is determined through orthogonal experiment and range analysis.