Development and analysis of a technique to improve air-cooling and temperature uniformity in a battery pack for cylindrical batteries

In this paper, a passive approach to improve temperature uniformity in a simple battery pack, in which an inlet plenum is added as a secondary inlet to a battery pack with an axial air flow, is examined. This inlet plenum changes the direction of the flow and eliminates the problem of recirculation and non-availability of air between the adjacent cells. Three different configurations are considered to examine the effects of the orientation of inlet plenum and the cells. CFD (computational fluid dynamics) is used to perform detailed simulations of the battery packs and the results are validated with data obtained experimentally from one of the battery pack configuration. The thermal performance of the battery packs is compared to the baseline case, and the results indicate an average maximum temperature reduction of the cells by ∼4% and an improvement in temperature uniformity of the cells by ∼39%. This is a simple battery pack that uses forced air passive cooling (no moving parts required in the battery pack) and introduces mixing and turbulence in the air flow to increase the temperature uniformity in the battery pack.