Project 1 - 1d modelling of liquid cooling system

A Battery Thermal Management System (BTMS) is responsible for regulating the temperature of a battery pack to ensure safe, efficient, and long-lasting operation. It prevents overheating, minimizes degradation, and optimizes battery performance, especially in Electric Vehicles (EVs), energy storage systems, and portable electronics.

Why is Thermal Management Important?

1. Safety – Prevents thermal runaway, fires, and explosions.
2. Performance – Ensures consistent power output and charging efficiency.
3. Battery Life – Reduces aging and degradation caused by extreme temperatures.
4. Energy Efficiency – Minimizes cooling/heating energy consumption.

Key Components of BTMS

Temperature Sensors – Monitor battery temperature at various points.
Cooling System – Dissipates excess heat using air, liquid, or phase-change materials (PCM).
Heating System – Maintains optimal temperature in cold environments.
Control Unit – Uses algorithms to regulate cooling/heating based on temperature data.
Battery Management System (BMS) Integration – Ensures coordination between thermal control and battery operation.

Engineers can analyse trade-offs in design parameters, evaluate performance, and implement control algorithms with the help of thermal software models that simulate how heat moves through a battery. Engineers can use MATLAB and Simulink to design thermal management systems for batteries. These systems make sure that a battery pack works well and safely in a wide range of operating conditions.

Do scenario studies to figure out how different design choices will affect the temperature.
Reduce costs by testing production battery hardware less often and for less money.
Automatically create embedded code for battery thermal management controls that is ready for production and check it against industry standards.

Scenario Subsystem

This subsystem sets up the environment conditions and inputs to the system for the selected scenario. The battery current demand and powertrain heat load are a function of the vehicle speed based on tabulated data.

Controls Subsystem

This subsystem consists of all of the controllers for the pumps, compressor, fan, blower, and valves in the thermal management system.

When lithium-ion batteries are being charged or drained, heat is made, which changes the temperature distribution in the battery modules and packs in a big way. In this work, data from experiments are used to make a model of how heat is made by a lithium-ion battery.

the response time of BTMS is only affected by the way the temperature is spread, not by how long it takes the batter to discharge or charge.

MATLAB Code:

%Battery box enclosure properties
SA_Bbox = 0.2; % m^2
BboxThickness = 0.001; % m (1 mm)
K_Bbox = 60; % W/mK
Bbox_air_volume = 0.05; % m^3

% Resin properties
ResinThickness = 0.003; % m (3 mm)
K_Resin = 1.8; % W/mK

% Thermal interface material properties
TIM_Thickness = 0.001; % m (1 mm)
K_TIM = 3; % W/mK

% Foam properties
FoamThickness = 0.01; % m (10 mm)
K_Foam = 0.05; % W/mK

% Module properties
ModuleMass = 13.5; % kg
Cp_Cell = 1015; % J/kgK
k_Cell = 25; % W/mK
ModuleThickness = 0.108;% m (108 mm)
ModuleLength = 0.39; % m (390 mm)
ModuleWidth = 0.152; % m (152 mm)
HeatGeneration = 2; % W

% Pipe properties
PipeLength = 0.05; % m (50 mm)
CS_Area = 0.000123; % m^2 (123 mm^2)
HydraulicDiameter = 0.0125; % m (12.5 mm)