Experimental and theoretical investigation of temperature distributions in a prismatic lithium-ion battery

This paper deals with the surface temperature distributions on the principal surface of the battery at 1C and 3C discharge rates and different boundary conditions (cooling/operating/bath temperature) of 5 °C, 15 °C, 25 °C, and 35 °C. The air cooling and water cooling system is designed and developed based on a prismatic Lithium-ion that has 20 Ah capacity. In addition, the battery thermal model is developed which represents the main thermal phenomena in the battery cell in terms of temperature distribution. The developed model is validated with the experimental data collected including temperature and discharge voltage profile. The results show that the average surface temperature distribution is higher at 3C discharge rate and 35 °C boundary conditions (BCs) and the average surface temperature distribution is lower 1C discharge rate and 5  °C BCs. Furthermore, it is observed that increased discharge rates and increased operating conditions or BCs result in increased surface temperature distributions of the battery.