Three-dimensional numerical study of the effect of an air-cooled system on thermal management of a cylindrical lithium-ion battery pack with two different arrangements of battery cells

Abstract

In this paper, a 3D battery pack (B-PK) containing 16 battery cells (BCL) with aligned and non-aligned arrangements is simulated. The batteries are 18,650 lithium-ion cylindrical ones. The B-PK is placed in a square air duct. Air enters from the top of the B-PK and exits from the bottom of the batteries. This study is performed by changing the inlet air velocity (V-AR) to the B-PK from 0.03 to 0.09 m/s for three charging and discharging cycles within 2000 s. The findings revealed that extending the duration and charging and discharging of the B-PK up to the third cycle increased the temperature of B-PK. The effect of V-AR changes is more pronounced in the second and especially the third cycles of battery charging process. The maximum (T-MX) and average (T-AV) temperatures of the B-PK as well as the temperature of air leaving the B-PK are all reduced when the V-AR is increased. The central batteries of the B-PK have a high temperature, whereas the batteries at the B-PK corners have a low temperature, according to an analysis of BCLs. Using an aligned arrangement of batteries in the pack reduces the T-AV of B-PK compared to the non-aligned arrangement of batteries.