Mass maldistribution research of different internal flowing channels in the cooling plate applied to electric vehicle batteries

Abstract

As temperature variations will cause electrochemical reactions to proceed at different rates in different regions of the cell, which thereby leads to incomplete energy utilization and inefficient management of battery life, temperature uniformity is becoming a new challenge in thermal management systems of electric vehicle batteries. With the wide application of liquid cooling strategies, temperature uniformity is significantly affected by coolant mass maldistribution, which is significantly affected by the flowing channel configuration in the cooling plate. However, there are few papers on this influence presently. Therefore, this paper presents numerical research on cooling plates with different internal flowing channels. A comparison of the effects among three channel configurations (cavity, parallel, and serpentine) on coolant flowing characteristics is carried out by analyzing their mass maldistribution coefficients and pressure drops. Then, a serpentine channel is selected for further optimization by an orthogonal experiment and range analysis method due to its better comprehensive performance. The study aims to reveal design principles on how channel configuration acts on mass maldistribution, and to demonstrate that significant performance gains can be realized with optimization techniques that can be utilized in battery cooling plates.