The low thermal conductivity of phase-change materials (PCMs) hampers the commercialization of PCM cooling battery thermal management systems. Further reduction of the thermal resistance between the PCM and batteries is still a challenging problem. In this study, a PCM / pin fin design is proposed. ANSYS Fluent was used to construct the model of PCM / pin fin design. The SIMPLE algorithm and the second-order upwind scheme were used to solve the momentum and energy equations. Compared with the traditional pure PCM and PCM/plate fin designs, the maximum temperature of the battery (T max ) was lower for the PCM/pin fin design because the heat transport from the batteries to the PCM was enhanced owing to the pin fin with a larger heat-transfer area. T max for the pure PCM configuration reached 55.76°C after discharge, exceeding the upper-limit temperature of 55°C. In contrast, for the PCM/pin fin design, T max was only 53.44°C. This indicates that the PCM/pin fin design effectively alleviates the heat accumulation of the battery and successfully maintains the battery temperature within a safe range. The effects of PCM thickness and fin section area on thermal behavior were investigated. It was found that the decrease of fin cross-sectional area can significantly reduce T max . When the fin cross-sectional area is 1 mm 2 , the T max is only 51.07°C. In addition to control T max under 55°C, the minimum PCM thicknesses were 3.71, 2.89, and 2.38 mm for pure PCM, PCM/plate fin, and PCM/pin fin, respectively. Thus, compared with the other designs, in the PCM/pin fin design, fewer materials are required, the weight of the modules is reduced, and the energy density is improved.
For a bottom-liquid-cooled battery thermal management system (BTMS), the small contact area between the battery bottom and the cold plate leads to a large temperature difference in the battery height direction. In addition, the increase in coolant temperature from the inlet to the outlet results in an excessive temperature difference in the battery module in the coolant flow direction. In order to solve the above issues, a wavy channel was first designed to strengthen the heat exchange between the battery bottom and the cold plate. The maximum battery module temperature for the wavy-channel design is 29.61 °C, which is a reduction of 1.75 °C compared to the straight-channel design. Then, the transverse temperature difference in the battery module was reduced by introducing a composite-channel design. Finally, on the basis of the composite channel, phase change material (PCM) was added to the battery’s top surface to reduce the temperature difference in the battery height direction. The results show that the maximum temperature and maximum temperature difference in the battery module of the composite-channel/PCM design proposed in this study are reduced by 6.8% and 41%, respectively, compared with the conventional straight-channel design.
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