FEM-Assisted Design and Characterization of a New Lithium Battery Pack-Heatsink Assembly

This work focuses on the design - driven by thermal simulations based on the finite element method (FEM) - and characterization of an assembly for temperature regulation of lithium battery packs. In this study we aim at developing a solution to achieve uniform temperature control over the cells of the battery pack. To this end, we included an aluminum plate featuring pins that thermally connect the battery pack to heat exchangers. To set the desired cell temperature, we considered thermal management systems with either air- or liquid-cooled heatsinks. Our findings indicate that a traditional serpentine liquid heatsink is particularly effective. Within the module, the heat transfer relies mainly on the aluminum plate and pins, which are designed to minimize the thermal resistance towards the heatsinks and to provide large thermal capacitance. This paper shows the main details of the FEM model, together with some validation results obtained using a dedicated test bench.