Analysis of the Effect of Heat Pipes on Enhancement of HEV/PHEV Battery Thermal Management 2021-01-0219

Thermal management of lithium-Ion battery (LIB) has become very critical issue in recent years. One of the challenges for the design and packaging of the battery is to maintain the battery temperature within acceptable ranges and also reduce temperature gradients within the battery cells. Controlling the battery temperature is essential for the battery performance and the long-term battery life. Increased difference between battery cell temperatures can lead to non-uniform charging and non-uniform ageing of battery cells. The purpose of this paper is to investigate available technologies using heat pipes as a means of improving battery thermal management. Several studies have been conducted regarding the effect of heat pipes on battery temperature. However, in this paper we present a comprehensive study of heat pipes effects through transient analysis of a complete vehicle thermal model. This allows the ability to analyze combined effects of radiation from exhaust system, ambient air temperature and air flow rates, internal heat generation as well as the effect of cooling system. In this study, a heat pipe heat transfer model is interfaced with a vehicle transient analysis model and a Lithium-Ion (Li-Ion) battery transient thermal analysis model to estimate battery internal temperatures. The conducted simulation in this study covers all vehicle driving conditions including hot soak, slow city traffic and high load/ high speed driving conditions.