Effect of ambient dissipation condition on thermal behavior of a lithium-ion battery using a 3D multi-partition model

Abstract The accurate prediction of lithium-ion batteries thermal behaviors is critical to design battery thermal management system. Herein, a three dimensional (3D) multi-partition thermal model coupled with a thermal network model is established to study the thermal behavior of an 18650 cylindrical lithium-ion battery under different ambient dissipation conditions. The validity of the proposed model is demonstrated experimentally via discharge tests and infrared thermal imaging. The developed model is applied to study the temperature distribution of the battery under different discharge rates and heat dissipation conditions. The results show that the 3D multi-partition thermal model has higher accuracy than lumped thermal method. The maximum error of averaging surface temperature between multi-partition model and experiment data is less than 3.5%. Through the analysis of volumetric heat generation rate, the battery cap is found as the one of heat concentrated areas and might cause the temperature gradient in the battery. Meanwhile, ambient dissipation condition plays an important role on the thermal behavior of batteries. With the increasing of convection heat transfer coefficient, the high temperature region of the battery is narrowed and the temperature of the battery tends to be uniform. The maximum surface temperature is decreased from 81.6 °C to 29.9 °C, and the maximum difference is decreased from 9.3 °C to 0.5 °C at 3C discharge rate.