2009-01-1386

Design and CFD Simulation of a Battery Module for a Hybrid Electric Vehicle Battery Pack
Debashis Ghosh
Delphi Thermal Systems

Patrick D. Maguire and Douglas X. Zhu

Ford Motor Company
Copyright 2009 SAE International

ABSTRACT
Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) analysis was performed using FLUENT to analyze the fluid thermal performance of a Battery cell container for the Ford Fusion Hybrid Electric Vehicle. The objective of the design was to maintain the cells in their desired operating temperature range with a near uniform temperature among the battery cells in the container, while minimizing energy losses associated with the pressure drop. Groupings of multiple such containers were assembled for bench test confirmation. Excellent agreement was obtained for air side pressure drop between the CFD and hardware physical properties. Multiple design iterations were made to improve the baseline design. Ultimately, the thermal gradient within the physical property was reduced to 1.8C with a minimal increase in system pressure drop.

voltage range and capacity. The flow of current during charge and discharge of the battery results in increased battery temperature due to the system resistance and resulting heat generation. If the battery is not adequately cooled, the temperature may exceed the desired operating temperature range, risking damage to the cells and reduced battery life. As a result, charge and discharge power of the battery is typically reduced as the temperature exceeds the desired operating range to reduce additional heat generation. The more effective the cooling design around the cells, the longer the full charge and discharge power will be available. Many recent battery systems use a number of D-size nickel metal hydride cells in a variety of arrangements. Both the Honda Insight [1] and Honda Accord Hybrid [2] battery systems have 3 layers, each made of 6 or 7 rows of cylindrical cells. The Honda Insight cells are cooled from side to side, and the air from one row is later used to cool subsequent rows. The Ford Escape Hybrid and Mercury Mariner Hybrid [3] batteries are made of 250 Dsize cylindrical nickel metal hydride cells. The cells are arranged side by side in two layers. The system has been designed to provide effective and uniform cooling as the air is forced across only one cell and does not later cross additional cells. The disadvantage of this particular design is that it lacks flexibility to scale the number of cells for alternate power capabilities or to reshape the package dimensions for easy integration into additional vehicle designs. The Toyota Prius battery system [4] uses modules composed of 6 rectangular (prismatic) cells. The quantity of prismatic modules can

INTRODUCTION
Hybrid electric powertrains are an effective and practical technology to improve a vehicles fuel economy without compromising the vehicles performance. One key element of a hybrid electric powertrain is the high voltage traction battery system, hereafter referred to as a battery, which has the functions of providing and receiving electrical power as demanded by the electric machine(s) as well as storing the energy when none is demanded. The core of the battery is the electrochemical cells, hereafter referred to as cells, which are conductively connected to achieve the desired

The Engineering Meetings Board has approved this paper for publication. It has successfully completed SAEs peer review process under the supervision of the session organizer. This process requires a minimum of three (3) reviews by industry experts. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of SAE. ISSN 0148-7191 Positions and opinions advanced in this paper are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of SAE. The author is solely responsible for the content of the paper. SAE Customer Service: Tel: 877-606-7323 (inside USA and Canada) Tel: 724-776-4970 (outside USA) Fax: 724-776-0790 Email: CustomerService@sae.org *9-2009-01-1386* SAE Web Address: http://www.sae.org Printed in USA

be adjusted according to the desired number of cells for different powertrain designs. However, the system is specifically intended for use with rectangular cells, and is therefore not directly applicable to the lower cost cylindrical cell design. The battery subsystem cooling design and analysis of the Ford Fusion Hybrid and Mercury Milan Hybrid [5] is presented in this paper. The subsystem is made of 2 modules, each consisting of 4 cylindrical cells, retained by an approximately rectangular shaped housing, which is described in the next section. The objective of the cooling design was to provide uniform and adequate cooling to each of the cells. For the system cooling design presented in a companion paper, the objective was to provide uniform cooling to each subsystem through proper air distribution.

The brick fulfills several functions, including providing structure to the battery, insulating the cells both electrically and from thermal noise factors, retaining any cell thermistors, and error proofing the array assembly process. However the principal functions of the brick are to support the cells and allow conditioning air to flow uniformly across the cell surfaces. The latter function is explained later in further detail. Brick Air Path The ideal air path is one where each cell receives an equal opportunity to reject heat to the air. This can be accomplished by forcing an appropriate volumetric airflow past each cell in a purely parallel cooling arrangement; one in which the air that cools one cell, does not later cool a second cell. However, designing a purely parallel cooling arrangement using cylindrical cells can be difficult, as it must account for the system objectives to achieve a low packaging volume, an array geometry suitable for the intended vehicle, and a cooling path with acceptable pressure drop.

DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF THE BATTERY

BATTERY BRICK DESIGN The cells studied contain nickel metal hydride chemistry, in a D-size form factor. Four cells are welded end to end to form a battery module. Two modules are positioned parallel to one another and retained in a plastic housing referred to as a brick (see Figures 1 and 2). The housing contains two approximately cylindrical chambers inside, and adopts an approximately rectangular shape outside for ease of assembly and retention. Multiple bricks are placed side by side and the modules are connected via electrical bussing to develop the battery array. Thus the array could be developed from any multiple of 8 cells. For the battery discussed here, 26 bricks were assembled for a 208 cell battery array. The array of 26 bricks creates an upper layer of 26 modules and a lower layer of 26 modules. While the brick design allows for electrical bussing to run vertically between two modules within the same brick, the array in question was connected horizontally between modules of neighboring bricks. The only vertical (inter brick) bussing was at the electrical mid point of the array, physically the left end of the array. This allows the electrical bussing to have traction battery (+) and traction battery (-) on the same end of the array.

n4 p4 n3 n2 p3 p2 n1 p1

Figure 2 Cells Revealed Within a Brick Thus the design challenge for a brick entails achieving a cooling path as close to parallel as is reasonable within a very compact package envelope. Given the large quantity of cells (208) it is desirable to create an inlet plenum for manifolding conditioned air in front of the bricks, such that uniform airflow can be presented to each brick. Similarly, each brick contains a miniature plenum inside which should allow each of the eight cells therein to receive their correct airflow. The cavity space outlined in green running axially along the entire length of a brick shown in Figure 3 serves the function of the above mentioned miniature plenum. This miniature plenum permits appropriate airflow to each cell between the top and bottom halves. Both modules are partly removed to show the air paths in Figure 3, with the remaining sectioned cell portions shown as light blue circles.

Figure 1 Brick Containing Eight Cells

Cored Out portions to reduce Open Angle

Figure 3 Conditioning Air Path Through a Brick The airflow path within a brick is shown in Figure 3. The air enters a brick axially (blue arrows), fills the miniplenum projected in the green outline, then wraps circumferentially around the cells in a semicircular fashion (pink arrows ) flowing through the narrow radial gaps between the cell and the plastic case, and finally exits the brick through the exhaust slots along the top and bottom. After exiting the brick, air flows axially (red arrows) as a recombined waste stream into the outlet chamber. Additional Air Path Elements Three additional elements to the brick design should be pointed out. The first is that there are annular, insulating rings which surround each welded union of two cells within the modules and the positive end of each module. These can be seen as the orange features in Figure 2 above. They reduce the likelihood of inadvertent short circuiting one or more cells during assembly. Additionally, the insulator rings are made of a compliant material which centers the battery modules within their respective housing cylinders, and maintains the correct radius of the circumferential gap for airflow around the cell. The second element is visible as four grey towers bisecting the exhaust slots in Figure 1. These are retention features for temperature sensors which may be placed at any cell in the battery pack as desired. The mounting well for temperature sensor is positioned such that air flow out of the hole is equally obstructed whether or not a temperature sensor is present, permitting a balance of the airflow. The last element which will be described later in detail can be seen in Figure 4. In this modified brick design, the plastic casing was molded such that the cells had varied amounts of circumferential wrap (the element shown in pink in Figure 3) going from one cell to the other axially.

Figure 4 Variable Wrap Angle in Brick Housing The remainder of this paper will describe the CFD model and simulation, the experimental data, and how the refinement made to the baseline brick design was able to significantly improve the thermal performance of the brick. BRICK CFD MODEL A single brick model was used for the CFD analysis. This kept the model size small and solution run time short. Figure 5 shows the CAD model used for a single brick. Hybrid meshing strategy was adopted to model the bricks. The mesh was created using the commercial software GAMBIT and the analysis was run on FLUENT. Flow aligned hexahedral cells were used for meshing most of the domain. Complicated areas of the domain were meshed with tetrahedral cells. The total model size for a single brick was 1.5-2 million cells. Careful attention was paid to capture the airflow entrance and exit effects of the bricks and the associated pressure drop penalties and heat transfer enhancements.

Figure 5 Computational Domain of CFD Simulation Boundary Conditions The inlet to the computational domain was located axially about 20 mm upstream of the inlet bus bar. The open flow area of the inlet to the brick domain was scaled from the total open area of the inlet plenum to the full battery pack comprising of 26

bricks. Appropriate scaling of the brick inlet area is important for accurate estimation of the air side pressure drop and local heat transfer coefficient due to flow acceleration upon entering the brick. This is why only a part of the inlet face to the computational domain was defined as the inlet boundary condition. A mass flow or velocity inlet boundary condition could be applied to the model. However, for our analysis zero total pressure inlet boundary condition with was applied due to downstream fan, in conjunction with velocity outlet boundary condition for exit to domain. The exit of the domain was located axially about 200 mm downstream of the outlet bus bar. Since the fan of the battery pack operated in suction mode, a velocity outlet boundary was applied at the exit of the domain. A pressure outlet with velocity inlet boundary condition could also have been used for this analysis; however, a velocity outlet boundary condition rendered a slightly better accuracy of the solution. For the single brick, a CFD model symmetry boundary condition was applied on all the side surfaces of the domain; the inlet plenum, the outlet plenum, and the side walls of the brick. This boundary condition is valid for the center bricks in a full pack far away from the ends of the array. For the corner bricks at the ends of the array, the end wall effects dominate. Ideally, a cluster of 3 to 5 bricks with symmetry boundary condition should be analyzed for more accurate thermo-fluid results. This would accurately capture the flow dynamics due to neighboring brick-to-brick interaction, and the cross stream interaction effects between the opposing airflow exiting the bricks with the end plates of the battery pack. In this paper, only the results of a single brick CFD analysis are presented and analyzed. The confining walls on the top and the bottom of the geometry were specified with no slip, adiabatic wall boundary conditions. There were no accommodations made for conduction through the plastic case in the CFD analysis presented. Heat Transfer Modeling Steady state heat transfer simulation was conducted for brick design and thermal performance prediction. The following simplifications were made for heat transfer modeling. First, the cylindrical nickel-metal hydride cells of the battery pack were modeled as isotropic solids. Second, every cell within the brick and the radial gaps for airflow around each cell were equal and of nominal dimension. Third, the heat generation by the battery cells during charge and discharge was uniformly distributed per volume inside the cells. In reality the heat source can be more concentrated near the terminals and welding contact areas of each cell. However, the intention of the analysis was to design the cooling system for generic battery housing, not the battery cells themselves. Finally, all of the airflow was available for cooling the cells (i.e., no leakage bypass airflow through the brick).

To keep the total mesh size manageable for the battery pack full system CFD analysis, the cylindrical cells were modeled as annular cylinders with the inner 50 percent of capturing the correct inlet dynamics to the brick. To maintain consistency with the full system CFD analysis, the cell model for the brick analysis was also made annular with battery cell volume subtracted out. This reduction of cell volume by replacing the cylindrical cells with annular cells required compensation of the volumetric heat generation by a corresponding higher value, conserving the total heat generation for the brick and pack. This approximation was verified via CFD analysis to have negligible impact on accuracy of the brick thermal predictions. The air properties were used at 35oC. The inner passive wall of the cell annulus was specified with adiabatic wall boundary condition. The insulator rings on the outside of the cells were modeled to be in perfect contact with the cell wall (i.e. with no contact resistance between the two surfaces). This allowed slightly higher heat transfer with airflow over the rings. The thermal conductivity of the insulator material was similar to rubber materials. A realizable k- (turbulent kinetic energy- and turbulent dissipation rate) turbulence model with enhanced wall functions including second order accuracy was used for fluid-thermal analysis. Additional secondary physical effects were accounted for in the CFD simulation for terminal and case conduction which are not described in this paper. For most of the CFD analysis results presented here, the above effects were not included as the rank ordering of the brick designs and sensitivity of cooling effectiveness to airflow wouldnt have changed significantly. However, the secondary effects were accounted for when comparing the overall brick thermal performance CFD data with the test data gathered from the bench test setup described in the following paragraph. The maximum and minimum cell temperatures within a brick were approximated by the maximum and minimum cell temperatures on the outer wall of the cells. The temperature difference (dT) within a brick for CFD analysis was calculated using the hottest and coldest cell surface temperatures. Mini-pack Test Assembly A bench test assembly, referred to as a mini-pack, was prepared to confirm and refine the CFD model. The mini-pack, as seen in Figure 6, was composed of four bricks, bounded by a retainer wall on either side, which in turn were held together via four connecting rods. The mini-pack also included the electrical bussing between the modules, all required voltage and temperature sensing components, and a housing to bound the flow outside of the bricks. For experimental data of a mini-pack, the brick temperature gradient (dT) was measured based on the approximated average cell temperatures of the hottest and coldest cells within the brick. Two parameters, the maximum cell temperature and brick dT, were used to evaluate the cooling effectiveness of the brick in the mini-pack.

brick due to additional secondary heat transfer effects, leakage flow, and part variation.

dT 1.9C

Figure 7 Baseline Brick Temperature Contours Figure 6 Mini-pack Bench Test Device CFD ANALYSIS RESULTS - The following idealizations were made for the CFD simulation. There was no bypass leakage flow within a brick, nor any bypass flow between adjacent bricks. The effect of airflow obstruction due to thermistors and thermistor retention features in the brick were not accounted for in the CFD model. The blockage effect of the thermistor mounting holes exist for all the cells, so its of less importance in differential cell temperature requirements, and the mesh size expenditure was too great to include the blockage. Positions and Scales on Graphs The nomenclature used to describe each cell position can be seen in Figure 2. The top module of cells, from the inlet to the rear end, are identified as n1, n2, n3, and n4 based on their proximity to the air inlet. The "n" indicates that the negative poles are facing the air inlet. Correspondingly, the cells in the bottom module are described as p1, p2, p3, and p4, indicating the positive poles are facing the air inlet. In all of the figures depicting thermal gradients, red and shades of red represent hotter temperatures, blue and shades of blue represent cooler temperatures, and green and yellow represent intermediate temperatures. dT 1.6C Baseline Simulation From the temperature contours in Figure 7, it is evident that the first cells on both the top and bottom modules in the baseline model were significantly cooler than the rest of the cells within the brick. This is attributed to the significantly higher heat transfer coefficient of the entrance flow, additional conjugate heat transfer surfaces from the cylinder ends facing the incoming air, and the highest thermal potential for heat transfer for the first row of cells. The third and the last row of cells had higher cell temperatures. The CFD predicted dT of 1.9C was high even with all the idealizations and simplifications. The actual brick dT was expected to be roughly 50% greater than the CFD predictions when the cells were assembled within the Figure 8 23% Constriction to p1-n1 Brick Exhaust Slots Major Exhaust Restriction The temperature contour results of constricting the p1-n1 slots by 60% can be seen in Figure 9. In this case the first position cells were significantly warmer due to the reduction in airflow around them. The resulting brick dT approximately 1.6C was 13% less than the baseline brick. While the dT was comparable between the 23% and 60% slot blockage designs, the location of the warmest cells within the brick changed. The first position cells changed from being the In order to lower the brick dT from this baseline, simulations were run with the exhaust slots of select cell locations partially blocked. The intention of constricting the slot openings was to additionally meter the airflow and raise the temperature of the cells in those locations. Two CFD simulations were run, blocking the first position p1-n1 (coldest baseline cell locations) exhaust slots by first 23%, and then 60%. Moderate Exhaust Restriction Figure 8 shows the temperature contour results of CFD simulation where the exhaust slots of the first position cells were constricted by 23%. The resulting temperature rise of the first row of cells was minor. The brick dT was reduced by 15% from the baseline design to approximately 1.6C, but the p4n4 cells were still warmer than desired.

coldest in the base and 23% restriction designs, to being the hottest in the 60% restriction design.

manufacturing robustness, an alternate approach was required. This new approach involved a feature to force more cooling air to bypass the first position cells to reduce the heat transfer, rather than dam the exhaust flow for air that had already cooled the first cells. The feature was a variable wrap angle by the brick housing around the cells. The variable wrap design was a more effective means to tune the brick and selectively heat or cool a particular cell as desired. The design proved to be simple, robust and manufacturable; it is presented below. ANALYSIS OF VARIABLE CELL WRAP DESIGN In the variable wrap designs, additional wrap of the brick housing around the circumference of the first cells was provided, resolving the problem of excessively cold p1n1 cells. The modified angular wrap around the leading cells was solely a function of the inter-cell temperature gradients. The varied wraps provided the means to raise the p1-n1 and p2-n2 cell temperatures while keeping the downstream cells p3-n3, and p4-n4 cells slightly cooler. The external brick contours providing the modified wrap angles can be seen in Figures 4, while the simulated restrictions for the CFD model are visible in Figure 11.

dT 1.6C

Figure 9 60% Constriction to p1-n1 Brick Exhaust Slots While the 60% slot blockage option offers some thermal performance advantage in terms of overall brick dT, it suffers from increased temperature gradients within the p1-n1 cells. The CFD predicted the p1-n1 cell temperature gradients to be 50% higher than the same cells in the baseline design. Figure 10 shows the comparison of airflow histogram around each cell within a brick for the baseline, the 23% restriction, and the 60% restriction designs. There was very minimal change in airflow distribution around the p1-n1 cells with 23% slot blockage, but about 2.25% airflow reduction for p1-n1 cells with 60% blockage of first row of slots.
Airflow around each cell for baseline design with metered slots 18.0% 16.0% 14.0%
airflow in %
Baseline Slot p1-n1 blocked 25% Slotp1-n1 blocked 60%

Baseline

15 deg

30 deg

Figure 11 Section Views of Variable Wrap Angles The additional wrap was molded into the plastic housing by coring out material from the side walls. This resulted in partial blockage of the axial flow path within the brick. To keep the brick pressure drop penalty low, the additional circumferential wrap around the cells was provided not along the entire length of a cell, but limited only to the length of a cell confined between the insulator rings. More details about this design can be found in [6]. In the CFD simulations, the wrap angle was adjusted in 15 degree increments relative to the baseline wrap. The p1-n1 and p2-n2 cell positions were studied with the variable wrap angles. Table1 describes the baseline and three variable wrap angle designs which were simulated. Where the wrap angles were changed, the increase in the wrap angle is noted in each of four positions, corresponding to the positions 1-4 in the module as shown in Figure 2.

12.0% 10.0% 8.0% 6.0% 4.0% 2.0% 0.0% sn1 sn2 sn3 sn4 sp1 sp2 sp3 sp4

Figure 10 Slot Restriction Effects on Airflow Obstructing the exhaust slots greater than 60% was predicted to make the design less robust to manufacturing variation. Ultimately, adjusting the open area of the four exhaust slots was not sufficient to meter different quantities of airflow for each cell and keep all of the cells within a brick at a uniform temperature. In order to minimize the brick temperature difference without producing high stress in select cells, and to increase the

Design Iteration 1 2 3 4

Wrap Angle (0,0,0,0) Baseline (15,0,0,0) (15,15,0,0) (30,15,0,0)

Coldest Location p1-n1 p2-n2 p3-n3 p3-n3 x

Hottest Location p4-n4 p1-n1 p1-n1 p1-n1

Relative Brick dT 0% (1.9C) 29% (1.35C) 37% (1.20C) 21% (2.30C) dT = 2.30C

Figure 14 Temperature Contours for #4 (30,15,0,0) A plot of brick dT change relative to the baseline for the variable wrap designs is shown in Figure 15, where the X axis specifies angle wrap of the design iteration and Y axis specifies brick dT as percentage of baseline. It is apparent that with additional wrap angle, the improvement in brick dT (lower the better) flattens to around 70% of baseline value (i.e., 30% improvement in brick dT) for an ideal brick. From the above figure it seems that a 20 degree wrap angle added to the baseline is close to the optimum for an idealized brick. However, when the secondary heat transfer effects of a functional brick are accounted for, the optimum wrap angle changes.
140% d T R e l a ti v e to B a s e l i n e 120% 100% 80% 60% 40% 20% 0% (0,0,0,0) (15,0,0,0) (15,15,0,0) (30,15,0,0) Design Iteration

Table 1 Wrap Angle CFD Results and Observations Figures 12, 13, and 14 show the temperature contours of all the cells within the brick for design iterations 2, 3, and 4 respectively. It is evident from the temperature contour plots that the upstream cell temperatures can be tuned with a variable wrap design. Additionally, this design permits the intra cell surface temperature gradient to be kept at an acceptable level.

dT = 1.35 C

Figure 12 Temperature Contours for #2 (15,0,0,0)

Figure 15 Brick dT Improvement with Wrap Angle Figure 16 shows the airflow histogram for each cell within a brick for different wrap angles. Compared to the variable slot design airflow distribution in Figure 9, the airflow was kept reasonably well distributed around each cell with the variable wrap design. The additional pressure drop penalty due to blockage of the axial flow was ~5 Pa, which is insignificant (<<1% ) in terms of total system pressure drop.

dT = 1.20C Figure 13 Temperature Contours for #3 (15,15,0,0)

Airflow Thr slots 18.0% 16.0% 14.0% 12.0%

Baseline-Uniform wrap Baseline uniform

change in maximum cell temperature is minimal, less than measurement accuracy.

Plot of Max Cell Temp within a Brick based on CFD analysis of Single Brick
0.6C

Study 3 (15,15,0,0) design2Wrap=15-15-0-0 Study 4 (30,15,0,0) design3Wrap=30-15-0-0

Baseline
percent 10.0% 8.0% 6.0% 4.0% 2.0% 0.0% n1 n2 n3 n4 p1 p1 p3 p4
50 cfm 80 cfm airflow 100 cfm Temp deg C

15-0-0-0 Add. Wrap Angle

0.3C 0.02C

Figure 16 Wrap Angle Effects on Airflow The design challenge based on the CFD analysis of an idealized brick is to bias the first row of cells to be warmer than the other downstream rows of cells to compensate for heat transfer due to terminal and case conduction. In all the results of the CFD simulation presented in Figures 10-16, the terminal and case conduction effects were not accounted for in the rank ordering of the designs. The secondary conductionconvection effects were modeled in a more refined analysis, not presented in this paper. However, their effects were accounted for in the results presented for a comparison of CFD prediction with test data for the additional 15 degree wrap angle modified brick. In the final implementation of the modified brick, the additional (15,0,0,0) degree wrap angle was selected as it called for minimal injection molding tooling change from the baseline design, though the possibility exists to further enhance the design with different wrap angle combinations. The 15 degree wrap angle modification was molded by removing material from the brick plastic case in the line of draw during injection molding. Functional life of a cell is directly correlated with the average cell temperature as well as the maximum temperature. Lowering the brick dT shouldnt therefore be at the expense of higher average cell temperatures. The variable wrap design allows the dT to be reduced by increasing the temperature of the first position of cells without increasing the maximum cell temperature of the brick. In fact, the maximum cell temperature within the brick decreased with variable wrap design. Figure 17 shows temperature histogram of maximum cell temperatures for the baseline design and the modified additional (15,0,0,0) degrees wrap angle design as a function of total battery pack system airflow based on CFD simulation. In this figure the three different airflows for each brick represent the equivalent total airflow for a full pack of 26 bricks as described in the companion paper. For equivalent 50 cfm total pack airflow, the decrease in maximum cell temperature is ~0.6 C. For equivalent 100 cfm pack airflow, the change in maximum cell temperature is insignificant. Overall, the Figure 17 Max Brick Temperatures vs. Battery Air Flow TEST DATA AND RESULTS COMPARISON The minipack test assembly previously described and shown in Figure 6 was tested with downstream airflow for the baseline and implemented (15,0,0,0) designs. Figure 18 shows the dT comparison of the single brick simulation to each of the tested mini-pack brick locations for both the baseline and the implemented designs. The brick CFD estimates include the secondary heat transfer effects. The CFD estimate for brick dT matches reasonably well with test data for modified brick. The maximum discrepancy is less than 10% for the modified brick design.
Comparision of CFD estimate and Test data for Brick delta T four brick Maini-pack
Experimental data baseline design Cfd estimate of baseline brick

4%

Experimental data Modified Brick Cfd estimate of modified brick

9%

Temperature

1%

14 %

8%

1%

8%

7%

Brick1

Brick2

Brick3

Brick4

Figure 18 Brick dT Comparison CFD vs.Test Figure 19 shows the percentage brick dT improvements of the implemented design with respect to the baseline based on test data. In the same figure, a CFD estimated brick dT improvement of ~ 32% is plotted. Experimental data shows about 36% improvement in brick dT was achieved by modifying the brick design with an additional 15 degrees wrap angle for the first row of cells. Similar brick dT improvements were also found when mounted in the full system battery pack. All the improvements in thermal performance were achieved with minimal additional expenditure in fan power.

Improvement in brick delta T over baseline design with 15 deg additional variable wrap angle design tested on 4 brick minipack
45%

Test data
40%

Cfd predictions

% improvement in brick delta T

35%

3. T. Oda, H. Okajima, T. Horiuchi, Power Supply Apparatus, US Patent 6 606 245 B2, Aug. 12, 2003. 4. M. Zolot, A. Pesaran, M. Mihalic, Thermal Evaluation of Toyota Prius Battery Pack, Presented at FutureCar Conference, 2002-01-1962, 2002. 5. Patrick Maguire, Douglas Zhu, David Patel, Ronald Elder, Hisham Younis, Philip Gonzales, "High Voltage Battery System for Automotive Applications", U.S.Patent Application 60/662418, March 16, 2005. 6. Debashis Ghosh, John Hambruch, Design for Reducing Thermal Spreads within a Battery Module, US Patent Application 11/ 820904, June 21, 2007.

30% 25% 20% 15%

10% 5% 0% Brick1 Brick2 Brick3 Brick4

Figure 19 Relative Reduction of dT for Final Design

CONCLUSION
CFD analysis was used to analyze the air cooling of battery cells within a brick. The CFD predictions and tests were in good agreement. The simulation was able to identify the potential hot spots and cold spots within the brick. The brick temperature gradient estimates lined up reasonably well with test data. Using simulationbased design and optimization, significant improvements were made in the batterys cooling performance from the baseline design. The maximum cell temperature within the brick didnt increase with the design change. Test data for the mini-pack showed more than 35% improvement in thermal performance of the bricks, resulting in a 1.8C maximum temperature gradient without significant increase in fan power.

DEFINITIONS, ACRONYMS, ABBREVIATIONS

Battery: High voltage traction battery assembly used for vehicle propulsion. Cell: Smallest, self contained, electrochemical portion of a high voltage traction battery. CFD: Computational Fluid Dynamics. dT: Temperature gradient. Minipack: A miniature array used for bench testing composed of 4 bricks, retaining end walls, connecting rods, required bussing and a simple enclosure. Module: Sub-assembly of two or more electrochemical cells welded together.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank Saravanan Paramasivam and Khanghua Chen of Ford Motor Company for their contributions to the brick mechanical and thermal designs, respectively. Additionally we wish to thank Dr. Wellington Kwok, Brian Schwemmin, Eric Schneider, Daniel Richey, Doug Lasley, and Greg Johnson from Delphi Electronics and Safety Division, and Steve Guzy from Delphi Thermal Systems for their contributions to the design process.

REFERENCES
1. M. Zolot, K. Kelly, M. Keyser, M. Mihalic, A. Pesaran, A. Hieronymus, Thermal Evaluation of the Honda Insight Battery Pack (NREL/CP-540-30095), Presented at 36th Intersociety Energy Conversion Engineering Conference, 2001. 2. N. Yusaku and H. Kosaka, Development of the Intelligent Power Unit for the V6 Hybrid Midsize Sedan, Presented at 2005 SAE World Congress, 2005-01-0275, 2005.