dc.description.abstract | This paper presents the 3-D numerical simulation of electric vehicle lithium-ion battery module by using computational software FLUENT. The purpose is to develop a reasonable thermal management model for prediction of thermal flow performance of battery module. Three simulation cases are conducted (simplified type, cylindrical and strip cell layout of a complete battery module), and the simplified battery module is designed for validating turbulence model and electrochemical model. In additional, the complete battery module consists of either cylindrical and strip Li-ion cell, and arranged in a staggered layout to yield cooling flow channel. Comparison of heat dissipation of battery module between these two
cells is also made.
Three turbulence models are simulated and compared with experimental pressure difference between inlet and exit of battery module, and prediction shows that RNG k-ε model has better accuracy with maximum error of pressure difference 8%. Then, the inlet velocity into the battery module is changed to validate the computed and experimental temperature, and agreement of both results is good within 1oC. Finally, the numerical result shows the flow and temperature pattern characteristics between the cylindrical and strip type of battery module. Overall, the flow inside the cylindrical cell of batter module is unsymmetrical. When the inlet velocity increases to 2 m/s, the flow direction of cylinder shape battery module divert
to upper left after flow passes through the second row of battery, and this also change the contact point and separation point. On the other hand, the strip type of battery module generates relatively smooth and smaller flow resistance, so it has better dissipation efficiency than that of the cylinder battery module.
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