CFD BASED SIMULATIONS FOR THERMAL MANAGEMENT OF LITHIUM-ION CELL USING PHASE CHANGE MATERIAL

Abstract

In the current manuscript, the impact of cell enclosure design on melting of phase change material has been investigated for the purpose of thermal management of lithium-ion cell. For this, we considered two designs of cell enclosure namely, Simple Enclosure and Finned Enclosure. The Simple Enclosure surrounds the phase change material RT-27 which is mounted around the cell. The Finned Enclosure differs Simple Enclosure such a way that it has five circular fins on the inner side distributed uniformly along the length. These fins are embedded into the phase change material which touch the cell. The cell top is the boundary with constant and uniform heat flux of 2500 W/m². The transient simulations are run for both designs until complete melt of the phase change material. The comparison of the results reveals the significance of fins for uniformly distributing the temperature into the phase change material to avoid the cell deformation or damage. The simulations are run on ANSYS Workbench with enabling the energy and melting/solidification models in the FLUENT. A mesh independence test has also been conducted for the validity of the model.