Optimization design of a parallel air-cooled battery thermal management system with spoilers

In this study, a novel cooling strategy based on setting spoilers in the airflow distribution plenum of a parallel air-cooling model was proposed to improve the cooling performance of a battery cooling system. In combination with the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method, the effects of the number and position of spoilers on the thermal behaviors of a battery thermal management system (BTMS) were explored. The results demonstrated that the number and position of spoilers exhibited a substantial influence on the heat dissipation performance of the battery pack. In comparison with the original model, the maximum temperature and maximum temperature difference of the best case with spoilers were reduced by 1.86 K and 2.51 K, respectively. Additionally, the effects of the angle and height of the spoilers on the cooling performance of the battery pack were analyzed and optimized using the 5-spoiler model. The results revealed that the angle of the spoilers had a significant effect on the cooling performance. When the angle was 80°, the maximum temperature and maximum temperature difference were reduced by 2.11 K and 2.77 K, respectively. Moreover, appropriately adjusting the height of the spoilers could improve the cooling performance. Furthermore, the width of the cooling channel also had an effect on the cooling performance, which was discussed. A spoiler was added in the first cooling channel to further improve the cooling performance of the battery pack. The results demonstrated that the maximum temperature and maximum temperature difference were reduced by 3.39 K (6.66%) and 5.87 K (94.24%), respectively. Finally, the influences of the length and height of the manifolds were investigated. The simulation analysis results indicated that the proposed thermal management method could effectively improve the cooling performance of the air-cooling system.