Research on liquid-cooling structure for lithium-ion battery with bionic leaf-vein liquid channels

Effective thermal management is crucial for the thermal safety and temperature uniformity of Lithium-ion batteries. Taking inspiration from the natural leaf-vein structure, this paper proposes a cold plate with novel internal bionic leaf-vein liquid channels. Three-dimensional cold plate models are established according to the contour of leaf-vein for multi-physical field numerical simulations. The effects of different flow rates and inlet/outlet arrangements on the heat transfer performance are investigated. The velocity, temperature, and pressure fields are calculated with the finite element method . Compared with the conventional rectangular flow channel, the results demonstrate that the maximum temperature of the cooling plate with the bionic-type structure is reduced by 10.17 K and the heat transfer efficiency is increased by 22.43 %. Finally, the properties of the test samples are compared to verify the numerical results. The proposed bionic leaf-vein cooling channels provide a positive direction for designing lithium-ion battery cooling systems to control the temperature distribution of the cell module.