Author(s): Vuyo Hadebe and Wiseman Isaacs

Abstract: Electric-vehicle battery modules generate heat unevenly during fast charging and high-discharge driving, and the cold plate's inlet port configuration determines how well the coolant reaches every cell. Despite this, most published cold-plate research evaluates a single inlet layout without comparing alternatives on the same module geometry. This research used Conjugate Heat Transfer (CHT) CFD to compare four coolant-inlet configurations single end-feed, dual opposing (counter-flow), dual parallel (co-flow), and central distributor on a 12-cell prismatic lithium-ion module producing 48 W per cell at 3C discharge. The cold plate was a 3 mm aluminium plate with internal serpentine channels carrying a 50/50 ethylene-glycol/water mixture at 8 L/min total flow. All four models shared the same mesh topology (6.2 million polyhedral cells) and boundary conditions, differing only in the inlet and outlet port positions. The central-distributor configuration produced the lowest maximum cell surface temperature (34.7 °C versus 41.8 °C for the single inlet) and the smallest cell-to-cell temperature spread (1.3 °C versus 4.9 °C). Its pressure drop, however, was 42% higher than the single inlet's (18.7 kPa versus 13.2 kPa). The dual-opposing layout offered the best balance: maximum temperature of 36.4 °C, spread of 1.9 °C, and a moderate pressure-drop penalty of 22%. A radar-chart comparison across five metrics temperature uniformity, maximum-temperature margin, pressure drop, flow balance, and manufacturing cost ranked the dual-opposing design as the preferred option for production because it achieved 89% of the central distributor's thermal performance at 64% of its pressure-drop cost. These results give battery-pack thermal-management engineers a quantitative basis for selecting inlet configurations during the cold-plate concept phase.

DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.22271/27078205.2026.v7.i2a.86

Pages: 42-46 | Views: 146 | Downloads: 54

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