Study on The Cooling Performance By Cooling Air Channel Design For Air-Cooled Hev Battery Pack

In this study, a cooling structure is designed that can improve the cooling efficiency of an air-cooled battery pack, which is an important component of hybrid electric vehicle powertrains. U-type air-cooled battery packs, which represent the most efficient structure for the distribution of cooling air flowing from the top plenum to lower plenum of battery packs, are considered herein. Based on the structure of U-type air-cooled battery packs, a cooling air channel that induces a smooth flow of cooling air between battery cells is established. A computational study of the optimized design of the air channels between cells is conducted to arrive at the design that mostly averages the inter-cell temperature of the battery pack for the set cooling air passage, minimizes the maximum cell temperature, and minimizes pressure loss. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis results present an optimal design of the cooling air passage of a battery pack based on the area of the same cooling air flow between battery cells in an air-cooled battery pack with the improved temperature uniformity by 8%, and the minimized pressure loss by 15%.