Thermal Modeling and Analysis of an Electric Vehicle Charging System

Abstract

In this article, computational fluid dynamics is used to analyze the thermal performance of an electric vehicle charging system with lithium‐ion battery packs. In the analysis, the locations of an air conditioner, circulation fans, and safety barrier are varied to parametrically study the effectiveness of the thermal management system of the charging system. Temperature iso‐surfaces are generated and used to identify the regions within the charging system that are within normal working temperature ranges. The circulation fans greatly impact the effectiveness of the cooling system. The orientation of the fans also plays an important role in the distribution of temperatures in the battery packs. Furthermore, the individual battery improvement is quantified using the rack cooling index (RCI), where an RCI increase of up to 92.4% is reported when the circulation fans are activated. The results from this study demonstrate that a combination of circulation fans and an air conditioner can result in a simple and cost‐effective thermal management approach for a charging system, whereas an air conditioner alone cannot achieve the same cooling effectiveness.