Study of cooling system performance on lithium-ion batteries for an electric vehicle

The acquisition of electric vehicles has grown considerably, as a result, autonomy and safety became an opportunity for improvement, one of the main systems that involve autonomy and safety are batteries. The safety and the performance of the batteries are directly related to the temperature reached during charge and discharge operation. In this paper, a CFD study is carried out on the thermal and hydrodynamic performance of a cooling system used to prevent overheating of lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles. Air as cooling fluid is used, which is directed towards the battery cells to remove the heat generated by each of these cells. An inline arrangement for the batteries is analyzed, different velocities and discharge rate to obtain temperature profiles on the cell surface are used, as well a total pressure drop along the cell array. The minimum inlet velocity which the working fluid must work to ensure adequate temperature of the battery cells in operation is found.