Research on liquid-cooling structure for lithium-ion battery with bionic leaf-vein liquid channels

Abstract

Effective thermal management is crucial for the thermal safety and temperature uniformity of Lithium-ion batteries. Taking inspiration from the natural leaf-vein structure, this paper proposes a cold plate with novel internal bionic leaf-vein liquid channels. Three-dimensional cold plate models are established according to the contour of leaf-vein for multi-physical field numerical simulations. The effects of different flow rates and inlet/outlet arrangements on the heat transfer performance are investigated. The velocity, temperature, and pressure fields are calculated with the finite element method. Compared with the conventional rectangular flow channel, the results demonstrate that the maximum temperature of the cooling plate with the bionic-type structure is reduced by 10.17 K and the heat transfer efficiency is increased by 22.43 %. Finally, the properties of the test samples are compared to verify the numerical results. The proposed bionic leaf-vein cooling channels provide a positive direction for designing lithium-ion battery cooling systems to control the temperature distribution of the cell module.