Power control strategy for preventing thermal failure of passively cooled automotive battery packs

Safety mechanism is required for an automotive battery pack to prevent thermal failure which could lead to catastrophic events. Passively cooled battery packs can prevent thermal failure by conducting adaptive control of battery power without any external cooling device. The key to this power control is how to secure battery safety while minimizing energy loss. This paper proposes a novel, adaptive power control strategy for automotive passive-cooling battery packs. Four different cases with electrochemical battery model are simulated and compared to each other according to a city driving profile. Driving simulation result confirmed that the present power control algorithm is an effective solution for preventing thermal failure along with improving energy efficiency of automotive battery packs.