Thermal management of battery modules using phase change composite and liquid cooled plates

Abstract

This dissertation presents the theoretical and experimental investigations pertaining to the Phase Change Material (PCM) based passive and hybrid thermal management systems for electric vehicle battery modules. The objective of the present study is to analyse the performance of PCM based passive and hybrid thermal management systems for various applications, more specifically for battery modules of electric vehicles. Initially, a theoretical model has been proposed to estimate the effective thermal conductivity (ETC) of open-cell metal foams (MFs) saturated with fluid or phase change materials (PCMs). These models incorporate realistic geometric characteristics (3-D) based on tetrakaidecahedron unit cell structures, incorporating different shapes of ligament and various shapes of node, orientation of ligament, geometry of MFs, coating thickness, and effect of materials. Among various models, the hexagonal-cell model featuring concave triprism ligaments and pyramidal nodes exhibits very good agreement with test data, with deviations below 3% for coated nickel and copper foams. The parametric study further highlights coating thickness as the most influential parameter, followed by the thermal conductivities of the coating material and the filler medium.