A Computational Study of the Heat Transfer Coefficient for Lithium-Ion Battery Temperature

In this study, the thermal behavior of a prismatic lithium-ion battery was examined by considering both the maximum battery temperature and the minimum battery temperature. The battery temperatures were obtained by implementing the NTGK modeling. A commercially available computational fluid dynamics software, ANSYS Fluent, was used to model the battery thermal profile. The highest maximum battery temperature was obtained for the battery with the lowest heat transfer coefficient while the lowest maximum battery temperature was observed for the battery with the highest heat transfer coefficient. The results showed that the battery temperature could be controlled by the heat transfer coefficient. The results also indicated that if a temperature difference of 1 K was acceptable, the heat transfer coefficient of 20 W m−2 K−1 was sufficient for the battery. The heat transfer coefficient should be adjusted to its optimum value for a battery thermal management system. This study can be used to select suitable heat transfer coefficients for battery thermal management systems.