Effect of Battery Inclination on the Performance of a Battery Thermal Management System

This paper presents a numerical analysis of an air-cooled battery thermal management system (BTMS). Battery inclination is introduced for improved temperature uniformity and reduced maximum temperature of the battery pack. Three configurations, viz. without inclination, ∅70 and ∅110 inclinations have been considered for a typical U-type configuration to understand the effects on battery thermal management performance. Velocity contours, temperature contours, streamlines, average battery temperature plots, and maximum temperature difference plots have been presented to analyze and discuss the results. The results show that using an inclined battery configuration improves the battery pack’s temperature uniformity and reduces the maximum average temperature of the battery pack. The maximum average temperature difference within the battery pack for the normal U-type system is found to be 5.09 K as compared to 3.84 K and 3.01 K attained from the inclination angle of 70º and 110º, respectively. A maximum temperature difference within the individual batteries (∆Tmax) of less than 2.1 K is obtained throughout all the cases. This proves the effectiveness of the proposed model as it can maintain ∆Tmax below the critical 5 K range.