Effects of the cold plate with airfoil fins on the cooling performance enhancement of the prismatic LiFePO4 battery pack

To maintain the optimal battery performance, it is essential to develop an efficient battery thermal management system for keeping the battery operation temperature within the appropriate range. In this work, a novel design of cold plate featuring airfoil fin channel is developed as a highly effective cooling module of a prismatic LiFePO4 battery pack. The thermal performance of battery and the thermo-hydraulic performance of the cooling module for the cold plate featuring airfoil fin channel, U-type channel and serpentine channel are numerically investigated and compared to reveal the superiority of the novel cold plate. The results indicate that compared with the U-type channel and the serpentine channel, the airfoil fin channel can enhance the total heat dissipation amount by 3.47% and 4.64%, respectively. Besides, the airfoil fin channel can provide the smallest battery maximum temperature and temperature difference under the same coolant flow rate. The airfoil fin channel provides the smallest pressure loss and heat transfer coefficient but the largest overall thermo-hydraulic performance indictor in terms of j/f factor. Under the same requirement of battery cooling performance, the remarkably smaller power consumption is required for the airfoil fin channel compared with the U-type channel and serpentine channel.