Cooling performance optimization of air-cooled battery thermal management system

Air-cooled battery thermal management system (BTMS) is usually employed to effectively dissipate heat and keep the battery temperature within a normal range. In this study, a new method was introduced to improve the cooling performance of the BTMS, the airflow distribution of the battery pack could be effectively improved by the proposal of parallel plate installation method. The cooling performance of nine original BTMSs was simulated and compared. Firstly, the parallel plate was added to the typical Z-type BTMS, the effect of the number of parallel plates on cooling performance of the battery pack was investigated. Then, four schemes of adding parallel plates were designed for each original BTMS, the cooling efficiency of all BMTSs was explored and compared. The results illustrated that the method adopted in this work could effectively improve the cooling efficiency of the BTMS. The results showed that compared to the typical Z-type BTMS, the maximum temperature and temperature difference of the BTMS with the best cooling performance were reduced by 3.42 K (6.26%) and 6.4 K (90.78%), respectively.