Topology optimization design and thermofluid performance analysis of li-ion battery cooling plate

Cooling plate design is one of the key issues for the heat dissipation of lithium battery packs in electric vehicles by liquid cooling technology. To minimize both the volumetrically average temperature of the battery pack and the energy dissipation of the cooling system, a bi-objective topology optimization model is constructed, and so five cooling plates with different flowing-channel topologies are designed. Introduced global partial differential equation (GPDE) for precise control of pump power to enable comparison of cooling performance under actual operating conditions of cooling plate. It is found that the inlet pressure and flow resistance coefficient of the topological cooling plate (TCP-W1) with energy dissipation weight of 0.1 is 11.54 and 48.12% lower than that of the rectangular cooling plate (RCP-W0) for a pump power of 5E–4W, while the corresponding temperature difference and standard deviation of the temperature decrease by 37.67% and 34.48%.The results show that the topology optimization method can enhance the uniformity of heat distribution and reduce the pressure loss and flow resistance of the cooling plate, which greatly improves the thermolfluid performance of the cooling plate.