Thermal Management of Li-Ion Battery Pack for Electrical Vehicles: A Comparative Study

The main goal of this study is to investigate numerically the thermal performances of thermal management systems (TMSs) for an electric vehicle battery pack. Three different TMSs were considered i.e. natural convection TMS mode, passive TMS using phase change material (PCM) and hybrid liquid coolant-PCM TMS mode. A lumped thermal dynamic model is developed based on transient energy balances and then validated with measured data from the literature. An in-depth parametric study is carried out where the influence of several design and operation parameters on the TMS’s performances is presented and analyzed. When compared to passive PCM and natural convection, the results demonstrate that combining PCM with liquid cooling for battery thermal management reduces the maximum battery temperature by around 38 and 4.5℃, respectively.