Application of Jets and Vortex Generators to Improve Air-Cooling and Temperature Uniformity in a Simple Battery Pack

Abstract

In this paper, the problem of air cooling and temperature nonuniformity at the cell and pack level is addressed. Passive techniques are developed by integrating jet inlets and vortex generators (VGs) in a simple battery pack with the goal to achieve an effective cooling, and the desired temperature uniformity at the cell and pack level to less than 5 °C, without an increase in the required mass flow and power requirements. Moreover, various configurations of the developed techniques are assessed and compared. In order to achieve the objectives, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is used to conduct numerical studies on the battery packs. The results concluded that by adding both the delta winglet (DW) vortex generator arrays and jet inlet arrays in the same configuration, improvements in temperature reduction and uniformity can be achieved. The results showed that the maximum temperature of the battery pack was reduced by ∼6% and the temperature uniformity at the pack level was increased by 24%. Additionally, a ∼37% improvement in the temperature uniformity at cell level was achieved.