Numerical Study of Heat Transfer Enhancement in the Electric Vehicle Battery via Vortex-Induced Agitator

Convective heat transfer plays an important role in the development of a high-performance battery cell. Electric vehicles carry a large amount of the battery cells to reach a longer range of endurance mileage. Thermal diffusion around the battery cells can be considered as obstacles to improve the convective heat transfer coefficient. In this paper, a novel agitator taking advantage of strong vortices is designed to disrupt the thermal boundary layer around the battery cells, thereby improving the fluid mixing for enhanced convective heat transfer. A fluid–structure interaction algorithm is developed to simulate the convective heat transfer rate at various flapping motion. Under the comparison with clean channel, the vortex-induced vibration by the agitated beam can increase the average Nusselt number by 119.59%. This research can be applied to optimize the thermal-structure design inside the electric vehicle battery.