Holistic 1D Electro-Thermal Model Coupled to 3D Thermal Model for Hybrid Passive Cooling System Analysis in Electric Vehicles

Abstract

Thermal management is the most vital element of electric vehicles (EV) to control the maximum temperature of module/pack for safety reasons. This paper presents a novel passive thermal management system (TMS) composed of a heat sink (HS) and phase change materials (PCM) for lithium-ion capacitor (LiC) technology under the premise that the cell is cycled with a continuous 150 A fast charge/discharge current rate. The experiments are validated against numerical analysis through a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model. For this purpose, a comprehensive electro-thermal model based on an equivalent circuit model (ECM) is designed. The designed electro-thermal model combines the ECM model with the thermal model since the performance of the LiC cell highly depends on the temperature. Then, the robustness of the model is evaluated using a precise second-order ECM. The extracted parameters of the electro-thermal model are verified by the experimental results in which the voltage and temperature errors are less than ±5% and ±4%, respectively. Finally, the thermal performance of the HS-assisted PCM TMS is studied under the fast charge/discharge current rate. The 3D CFD results exhibit that the temperature of the LiC when using the PCM-HS as the cooling system was reduced by 38.3% (34.1 °C) compared to the natural convection case study (55.3 °C).

Recent Advances in CFD Simulations of Multiphase Flow Processes with Phase Change

“…The characteristics of phase change processes are introduced in this section as follows. Thermal management with the phase change has superior performance compared to conventional single-phase processes. , This is primarily because the latent heat of fluid is significantly larger than the sensitive heat, enabling an almost uniform temperature during the absorption and release of latent heat. As a result, the phase change presents promising opportunities for temperature regulation in exothermal reactions, unclear reactors, electronics, vehicle batteries, solar collectors, buildings, and space missions Moisture in wet materials, such as biomass, coal, food, and pharmaceuticals, can hinder the thermochemical conversion reaction or accelerate spoilage.…”

A Novel Intelligent Fan Clutch for Large Hybrid Vehicles

“…An electromagnetic clutch can be electronically controlled to achieve multi-stage speed control, but with the introduction of additional control devices to reduce the reliability of the clutch, the structure is more complex, and for some hybrid vehicles in harsh environmental conditions, the traditional electromagnetic clutch struggles to ensure the stability of the work of the transmission system [15,16]. Based on this, in order to solve the defects of complex clutch structure, low reliability, and high power consumption in the transmission system of hybrid vehicles [17,18], in this paper, an intelligent fan clutch based on the shape memory effect of SMAs is proposed. The nonlinear friction torque generated by an SMA spring under thermal drive enables the clutch to have good transmission characteristics under any temperature of hybrid vehicles, and the self-adaptive nature of the clutch under different temperatures can realize intelligent speed regulation of the fan, solve the problems such as serious heating of the transmission system, and can significantly reduce energy consumption and improve the stability of the transmission system.…”

Enhancement of the Thermal Energy Storage Using Heat-Pipe-Assisted Phase Change Material

“…The world energy demand has been increasing fossil fuel usage. However, due to the environmental impacts, the usage of fossil fuels has been discouraged and the use of passive techniques, renewable energies, energy storage, and electric vehicles has increased [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. Therefore, the usage of thermal energy storage became more popular.…”