Structural design of a composite board/heat pipe based on the coupled electro-chemical-thermal model in battery thermal management system

Based on the electrochemical-thermal coupled model, we build a coupled three-dimensional battery thermal management system (BTMS) which combines the composite board and the heat pipes. This model is applied to assess the heat performances of different structural BTMS with boards and pipes. The results show that the system with the heat pipes and composite board is more effective in improving heat performances than that with a single composite board. Furthermore, the BTMS with a combination of vertical and horizontal pipes achieves a higher comprehensive cooling efficiency than that with the single pipes. The optimal arrays exhibit a significant improvement of the comprehensive performances of the traditional composite board thermal management system, where T-max and Delta T reach 296.85 K and 3.29 K after a full charging/discharging cycle under a 3C rate, respectively. Besides, the contact area between the battery and pack shell plays a vital role in the cooling performances. At the same time, the improved BTMS based on horizontal pipes achieves the highest cooling efficiency, with T-max = 294.37 K and Delta T = 1.08 K. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.