Numerical investigation on lithium-ion battery thermal management utilizing a novel tree-like channel liquid cooling plate exchanger.

• Micro-channel cold plate was used for battery thermal management. • The optimal value area of tree net can be obtained through construction theory. • Increasing flow rate decreases cell temperature rise markedly. • The tree-like net has more obvious pressure drop advantage than the serpentine net. To improve the battery life and promote the application of electric vehicles, microchannel cooling technology had been widely developed. Therefore, this study was inspired by bionics and designed a novel (anode, cathode) double-layer tree-like channel cooling plate based on constructal theory. The anode side was dispersed with a cooler coolant. And the cathode side was used as a hot fluid collecting layer. Meanwhile, the effects of three structural parameters (length ratio, height to width ratio and channel volume fraction) on maximum temperature and standard deviation of surface temperature were investigated. The obtained results demonstrated that optimal maximum temperature and temperature uniformity were achieved at a length ratio of about 0.70, a height to width ratio close to 70/100 and the channel volume fraction of about 0.06. In addition, increasing inlet mass flow rate can obtain the required heat dissipation capacity but at the expense of pressure drop. At the same time, the characteristic changes of the flow thermal characteristic parameters were compared with the serpentine net under the same heat transfer surface area. In summary, the maximum temperature and the standard deviation of surface temperature of the optimized cold plate are reduced by 1.79% and 69.25%, respectively. And the pressure drop reduced by 79.13%. The optimal case in this research can be widely applied to enhance the cooling performance in liquid-cooled BTMS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]