Thermal studies on battery packs with different geometric configuration of 18650 cells

Abstract

Electric vehicles are coming into fame in recent times in many of the countries as there is zero tail-pipe emissions. In line with this Indian government plans to migrate to full electric vehicles by 2030 in order to reduce the environmental pollution caused by existing conventional internal combustion engines. Currently lithium-ion battery is widely used as energy source in electric vehicles and hence many of the domestic and international OEMs started their aggressive research in the field of battery. It is known that battery needs to be operated at defined operating temperature range for maximum performance and hence battery thermal management plays a vital role. In this work, thermal management strategies with different geometrical cell arrangements for a battery pack consisting of 18650 format LiNiMnCo cylindrical cells are studied using Ansys FLUENT for natural convection and forced convection conditions. Studies showed that air cooling with fan placed at the top side of the box maintains uniform temperature distribution across the battery pack irrespective of the cell arrangement.