The enhancement of heat transfer in cooling system of cylindrical lithium-ion battery pack is numerically investigated by installing fins on the cooling plate. Battery Design StudioⓇ software is used for modeling electro-chemical heat generation in the battery and the conjugated heat transfer is analyzed with the commercial package STAR-CCM+. The result shows that installing fins on the cooling plate increases the convective heat transfer on the surface and thus lowers the maximum temperature of the battery pack. As the length and thickness of the fins increase, heat transfer in the battery pack improves. Considering the geometry and airflow of the battery pack, the optimal values for the length and thickness of the fin are both 2mm. As the convective heat transfer coefficient of the surface increases, the maximum temperature of the battery pack is greatly reduced and the temperature gradient is greatly improved.

This analytical work was performed to reveal the effect of inlet geometry of battery pack on the temperature distributions and flow stream line for a electric vehicle. To achieve this, standard k-ε model with wall function was applied and the working conditions of battery pack under different air flow rate and inlet area according to the geometry were estimated. It was revealed that as inlet area was smaller, the flow velocity was faster, and it can't cover the whole area of battery module. In case of two inlet case, the cooling efficiency of air flow is less than that of one inlet case because of low flow rate.