Expansion riveting pipe type joint for liquid cooling system

Abstract

The invention relates to the technical field of power battery thermal management, in particular to an expansion riveting pipe type connector for a liquid cooling system, which comprises a pipeline, and a limiting buckle is arranged on the outer wall of the contact end of the pipeline and the liquid cooling system. Through innovative fusion of an integrated structure and a plastic forming process (such as pipe expansion and cold heading), collaborative improvement of cost, efficiency and reliability is realized, an intermediate assembly link is omitted due to the integrated design, multiple procedures are simplified into three steps of blanking, forming and welding, the production process is greatly shortened, and meanwhile, the production efficiency is greatly improved. According to the structure, the welding interface between the joint and the pipe section is eliminated fundamentally, and the leakage risk is reduced; according to the technical scheme, the boss formed through cold heading forms an ultra-large welding area, in addition, the forming process guaranteed by the mold ensures the consistency and stability of the product size, and the structure-process-function collaborative design provides a high-performance and high-reliability solution for a battery liquid cooling system while achieving light weight and compact layout.

Description

TECHNICAL FIELD

[0001] The present application relates to the technical field of power battery thermal management, and particularly relates to a rivet pipe joint for a liquid cooling system. BACKGROUND

[0002] With the increasing requirements of new energy vehicles on the energy density and fast charging power of power batteries, an efficient thermal management system has become the key to guaranteeing the safety and service life of the batteries. The liquid cooling system has become the mainstream solution for medium and high-end vehicles due to its excellent heat exchange efficiency and temperature uniformity. The system realizes heat transfer through the connection of the liquid cooling plate and the cooling pipeline, and the connection joint needs to maintain sealing reliability and structural integrity under the conditions of continuous vibration, pressure impact and cold and hot cycles. The performance of the joint directly affects the reliability of the entire thermal management system.

[0003] Currently, there are mainly two technical routes for the connection scheme commonly used in the industry: one is a multi-part assembly scheme in which a traditional CNC machined metal joint is welded with a pipe segment and then connected with a cooling plate. This scheme has defects such as low material utilization, low processing efficiency, leakage risk introduced by multiple welding, poor quality consistency, and high manufacturing cost. In order to achieve lightweight, the cooling plate and the joint tend to use materials such as aluminum alloy. However, the traditional CNC joint requires extremely high process requirements when welded with an aluminum pipe, and different sub-components need to increase structural welding surfaces to ensure welding, which is contrary to the direction of lightweight and integration. The second is an injection molding and metal combined joint scheme, which has problems such as insufficient weather resistance of plastic parts, high mold cost, and also relies on multi-part assembly. Both of them are difficult to meet the stringent requirements of new energy vehicles for low cost, high efficiency and high reliability, and restrict the further optimization and large-scale application of the battery thermal management system. In view of this, we provide a rivet pipe joint for a liquid cooling system. SUMMARY

[0004] In view of the deficiencies of the prior art, the present application provides a rivet pipe joint for a liquid cooling system, which solves the technical problems of high cost, complex process, high reliability risk and high cost caused by the multiple parts and multiple welds of the traditional joint. The joint is integrally formed with a quick plug buckle structure, which reduces the number of independent parts and the welding process, greatly simplifies the production process, reduces the manufacturing cost, and improves the long-term service reliability of the product in the harsh vehicle environment, thereby better meeting the strict requirements of the new energy vehicle industry on the core components of the thermal management system.

[0005] To solve the above technical problems, the application provides the following technical scheme: a liquid cooling system uses a pipe type joint, which comprises a pipeline, the outer wall of the pipeline contact end of the liquid cooling system is provided with a limiting buckle, the outer wall of the pipeline contact end of the liquid cooling plate is fixedly installed with a disc, the bottom end of the disc is provided with a welding seat to expand the welding area of the pipeline and the liquid cooling plate, a plurality of sets of fastening bolts are arranged between the welding seat and the disc to realize the disassembly of the welding seat, a plurality of sets of sealing grooves are arranged in the inner wall of the pipeline connection end of the liquid cooling system, and a sealing ring is embedded and installed in each sealing groove to realize the sealing of the pipeline and the liquid cooling pipeline.

[0006] Preferably, the limiting buckle is a non-integrated buckle, and the non-integrated buckle is fixed with the pipeline by an extrusion process.

[0007] Preferably, the limiting buckle is an integrated buckle, and the integrated buckle is a reverse conical cylinder structure.

[0008] Preferably, the pipeline is a joint of a plurality of functional areas formed by one metal pipe material through a processing process, and the joint comprises a sealing section, a boss section and a connecting section in sequence along the axial direction from the first end to the second end.

[0009] Preferably, the pipeline is an aluminum alloy extruded pipe, and the non-integrated buckle is provided with asymmetrically distributed protrusions.

[0010] Preferably, when the pipeline is fixed with the liquid cooling plate, the bottom end of the welding seat and the contact surface of the pipeline and the liquid cooling plate are in the same horizontal plane to realize the neat parallel of the fixed surface.

[0011] Preferably, the sealing section is formed by radial plastic expansion of the pipeline wall through a pipe expanding process, and the outer wall constitutes a precise sealing surface for sealing cooperation with the sealing ring in the female joint.

[0012] Preferably, the boss section is formed by local radial thickening of the pipeline wall through a cold heading process, the outer diameter of the boss section is greater than that of other parts of the joint, and one end face of the boss section constitutes an axial limiting surface when the joint is inserted into the liquid cooling system.

[0013] Preferably, the connecting section is located on the side of the boss section away from the sealing section, and is fixed by welding and gluing connection between the welding seat and the liquid cooling plate.

[0014] Preferably, the outer diameter tolerance of the sealing section after the pipe expanding process is greater than IT9 level, and the surface roughness Ra is less than 1.6 microns to realize leak-free sealing, and the wall thickness of the boss section formed by the cold heading process is 1.5-3 times the wall thickness of the adjacent pipe body.

[0015] Through the above technical scheme, the application provides a liquid cooling system pipe type joint, which has at least the following beneficial effects: 1. The application realizes cost reduction and production efficiency leap through integrated design and plastic forming process (such as pipe expansion, cold heading), compared with traditional CNC machining, the material utilization is improved, the material cost is reduced; pipe expansion and cold heading as high-speed stamping process, the processing efficiency is higher than CNC, the equipment energy consumption and occupation time are reduced, the integrated structure eliminates the intermediate assembly link, simplifies the traditional multi-process into three steps of blanking, plastic forming and welding, and shortens the production process chain.

[0016] 2. The application adopts integrated structure to fundamentally eliminate the welding interface between the joint and the pipe section, reduces the leakage risk, forms a super large welding area through the boss structure formed by cold heading, increases the connection strength of the joint and the liquid cooling system, and the anti-vibration and anti-fatigue performance is better than that of the traditional welded joint, in addition, the plastic forming process is guaranteed by the mold, the product size consistency and stability are high, not dependent on the worker's skill, ensures the quality consistency in batch production, and enhances the long-term service reliability in the harsh environment of vehicle-mounted.

[0017] 3. The application avoids additional connecting parts and reinforcing parts through integrated design, the structure is compact, and the weight is lighter; the connection with the liquid cooling system is more compact, which is conducive to the layout optimization and space saving of the cold plate, through the "structure-process-function" collaborative design, the cost, efficiency and reliability are unified, not only reduces the manufacturing cost and complexity, but also improves the sealing performance and connection strength, providing a high-performance and high-reliability solution for battery liquid cooling system. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS

[0018] The drawings described herein are used to provide further understanding of the present application, constitute a part of the present application, the illustrative embodiments of the present application and the description thereof are used to explain the present application, and do not constitute improper limitation on the present application.

[0019] In the drawings: Figure 1 It is a schematic diagram of the overall mounting structure of the application; Figure 2 It is a schematic diagram of the appearance structure of the application; Figure 3 It is a schematic diagram of the split structure of the application; Figure 4 It is a schematic diagram of the internal cross-section structure of the application; Figure 5 It is a schematic diagram of the internal cross-section structure of the application; Figure 6 It is a schematic diagram of the integrated buckle appearance structure in embodiment two of the application.

[0020] In the drawings: 1, pipe; 2, limiting buckle; 3, disc; 4, welding seat; 5, fastening bolt; 6, sealing groove; 7, sealing ring. DETAILED DESCRIPTION

[0021] The technical solutions in the embodiments of the present application will be clearly and completely described below with reference to the drawings in the embodiments of the present application. Obviously, the described embodiments are only a part of the embodiments of the present application, rather than all the embodiments of the present application. Based on the embodiments in the present application, all the other embodiments obtained by a person of ordinary skill in the art without creative work, fall within the protection scope of the present application.

[0022] Embodiment one Figure 1 - Figure 5For an embodiment of the present application: in order to solve the problems of high cost, complex process, high reliability risk and high cost caused by multiple parts and multiple welding of the existing traditional joint, the embodiment provides a liquid cooling system with a bulging pipe joint, which comprises a pipeline 1, the pipeline 1 is an aluminum alloy extruded pipe, the sealing section, the boss section and the connecting section are integrated into one body through integrated forming process (such as bulging pipe and cold upsetting), which simplifies the production process, reduces the number of parts and welding interfaces, thereby improving material utilization, reducing cost and leakage risk, while ensuring size consistency and connection strength, the pipeline 1 is a joint of multiple functional areas formed by one metal pipe through processing technology, the joint includes a sealing section, a boss section and a connecting section in sequence along its axial direction from the first end to the second end, the sealing section is formed by the bulging pipe process to make the pipeline 1 wall produce radial plastic expansion, the outer wall constitutes a precise sealing surface for sealing cooperation with the sealing ring in the female joint, and the sealing ring in the female joint realizes high-efficiency sealing cooperation, through the bulging pipe process control, the sealing section reaches high outer diameter tolerance level and low surface roughness, which ensures the formation of a leak-free interface in the liquid cooling system, improves sealing reliability, simplifies the assembly process, provides long-term stable sealing protection for the power battery thermal management system, the outer diameter tolerance level of the sealing section after the bulging pipe process is greater than IT9 level, and the surface roughness Ra is less than 1.6μm, so as to realize leak-free sealing, ensure that the precise sealing surface and the female joint realize leak-free cooperation, improve sealing reliability and eliminate the risk of traditional welding leakage, the boss section is formed by the cold upsetting process to make the pipeline 1 wall produce local radial thickening, the outer diameter of the boss section is greater than that of other parts of the joint, and one end face of the boss section constitutes an axial limiting surface when the joint is inserted into the liquid cooling system, the thickening design makes the outer diameter greater than that of other parts of the joint, forming a mechanical stop surface, which provides accurate axial limiting function when inserted into the liquid cooling system, and the thickening section creates a large welding area, which improves the connection strength with the liquid cooling plate and enhances the anti-vibration and anti-fatigue performance, and the size consistency ensured by the cold upsetting process ensures the quality of mass production, eliminates the leakage risk of traditional welding interface, realizes high-reliability connection, and the wall thickness of the boss section formed by the cold upsetting process is 1.5-3 times, forming a local reinforced structure, providing axial limiting and super-large welding area, enhancing the joint connection strength, anti-vibration and anti-fatigue performance, the connection section is located on the side of the boss section away from the sealing section, as the key connection interface of the joint and the liquid cooling plate, it is stably mechanically fixed through the welding seat 4, which is fixed by welding and gluing between the welding seat 4 and the liquid cooling plate, the welding seat 4 and the disc 3 are detachably connected through the fastening bolts 5, which not only expands the welding area to enhance the connection strength and sealing reliability between the joint and the liquid cooling plate, but also facilitates maintenance; fixed by welding or gluing, etc., eliminating the leakage risk of traditional multi-part assembly, improving the anti-vibration and anti-fatigue performance, ensuring the long-term stable operation of the battery thermal management system in harsh environment, the outer wall of the contact end of the pipeline 1 with the liquid cooling system is provided with a limiting buckle 2, the limiting buckle 2 is a non-integrated buckle, the non-integrated buckle is fixed with the pipeline 1 by extrusion process, the non-integrated buckle is provided with asymmetrically distributed protrusions to realize quick plug-in function, the mechanical locking is provided through the protrusion structure to ensure the stable connection between the joint and the liquid cooling system, the disc 3 is fixedly installed on the outer wall of the contact end of the pipeline 1 with the liquid cooling plate, the bottom end of the disc 3 is provided with a welding seat 4 to expand the welding area of the pipeline 1 with the liquid cooling plate, when the pipeline 1 and the liquid cooling plate are fixed, the bottom end of the welding seat 4 and the contact surface of the pipeline 1 and the liquid cooling plate are in the same horizontal plane to realize the neatness and parallelism of the fixed surface, providing uniform contact plane for the welding process, improving the stability of welding quality, avoiding false welding or stress concentration caused by inclination, maximizing the effective welding area by flat lamination to enhance the structural strength and sealing reliability between the joint and the liquid cooling plate, precise flat fit is also conducive to realizing modular installation and positioning, improving assembly efficiency, a plurality of fastening bolts 5 are arranged between the welding seat 4 and the disc 3 to realize disassembly of the welding seat 4, a plurality of sealing grooves 6 are arranged in the inner wall of the connection end of the pipeline 1 with the liquid cooling system, and a sealing ring 7 is embedded and installed in each sealing groove 6 to realize the sealing of the pipeline 1 and the liquid cooling pipeline.

[0023] The device takes a metal pipe as a basic material pipeline 1, which is directly formed into an integrated joint with multiple functional areas through a continuous plastic processing process, fundamentally eliminating the welding interface between the joint and the pipe section in the traditional scheme, reducing the leakage risk; The joint can be divided into three key functional sections along the axial direction: sealing section, boss section and connection section. The sealing section is a precise structure formed by radially plastic expansion of the pipe end of the pipeline 1 through the expansion pipe process, the outer diameter tolerance is strictly controlled above IT9 level, and the surface roughness Ra is less than 1.6 μm, so as to form a smooth and accurately sized cylindrical sealing surface, which forms a tight interference fit with the sealing ring in the female joint to realize the main sealing function, plastic forming instead of mechanical processing not only improves the production efficiency, but also ensures the consistency and reliability of the sealing interface, which can effectively withstand the pressure pulse and long-term vibration of the liquid cooling system; Immediately adjacent to the sealing section is the boss section, which uses cold heading process to make the pipe wall of the pipeline 1 locally radially thickened, and the wall thickness can reach 1.5 to 3 times of the wall thickness of the adjacent pipe body, which has a double effect: first, the outer diameter of the thickened boss is larger than that of other parts of the joint, and its end face acts as a mechanical stop when the joint is inserted into the liquid cooling system port, providing accurate axial positioning and preventing excessive insertion; second, the formed super-large annular area provides a wide welding area for subsequent connection with the liquid cooling plate, enhancing the joint's pull-out resistance and torsional performance. The connection section is located on the other side of the boss section and is the interface directly fixed with the liquid cooling plate. Through the combination structure of the disc 3 and the welding seat 4, the bottom end of the welding seat 4 can be strictly kept on the same horizontal plane with the contact surface of the pipeline 1 and the liquid cooling plate, ensuring the parallelism of the fixed surface, which not only provides an ideal uniform contact plane for the welding (or gluing) process, avoiding stress concentration and virtual welding caused by inclination, but also expands the effective welding area, thereby ensuring the long-term structural integrity and sealing stability of the connection interface in the harsh vehicle vibration environment. In addition, the detachable design also provides convenience for system maintenance and replacement.

[0024] In terms of quick connection function, the outer wall of the pipeline 1 contact end with the liquid cooling system is provided with a limiting buckle 2. When the joint is inserted into the system port, the buckle is engaged with the corresponding structure inside the port, achieving quick plug and anti-loose, and the asymmetric design ensures the directionality of the connection, preventing misassembly. In terms of sealing, in addition to the main sealing section, the inner wall of the connection end of the pipeline 1 is also provided with multiple sealing grooves 6, and each sealing groove 6 is embedded with a sealing ring 7, forming a secondary sealing barrier to prevent leakage of the cooling liquid along the interface, and forming a double insurance sealing mechanism.

[0025] The device not only improves production efficiency and material utilization, reduces cost, but also fundamentally solves the leakage risk and quality consistency problem through integrated molding and mold guaranteed process, providing a high-performance and high-reliability connection solution for new energy vehicle battery liquid cooling system.

[0026] Embodiment two The same as embodiment one, for reference Figure 6 The difference is that the limiting buckle 2 is an integrated buckle, which is a reverse cone cylinder structure, and this embodiment further integrates the quick plug function.

[0027] The quick plug buckle forming method includes but is not limited to CNC, extrusion molding, etc., and can also be integrated in the pipeline part by cold heading. If it is a non-integrated quick plug structure, a limiting structure including but not limited to a boss is provided on the buckle structure to ensure that joint installation errors occur when the male joint is installed, and the pipeline rotates during subsequent use.

[0028] It should be noted that, as used in this document, the terms "includes" and "including" are used as the plain-English equivalents of the terms "comprises" and "comprising," respectively. Thus, these terms, when used in the present document, are neither

[0029] While the embodiments of the application have been shown and described, it is to be understood that the embodiments described are only by way of example and are not limiting of the scope of the application. Changes, modifications, substitutions and variations can be made to the embodiments without departing from the spirit of the application as defined by the following claims and their equivalents.

Claims

1. A swage for a liquid cooling system, characterized by: The system includes a pipeline (1), a limiting buckle (2) on the outer wall of the pipeline (1) in contact with the liquid cooling system, a disc (3) fixedly installed on the outer wall of the pipeline (1) in contact with the liquid cooling plate, a welding seat (4) at the bottom of the disc (3) to expand the welding area between the pipeline (1) and the liquid cooling plate, and multiple sets of fastening bolts (5) between the welding seat (4) and the disc (3) to realize the disassembly and assembly of the welding seat (4). Multiple sets of sealing grooves (6) are opened on the inner wall of the pipeline (1) connecting with the liquid cooling system, and a sealing ring (7) is embedded in each set of sealing grooves (6) to realize the sealing between the pipeline (1) and the liquid cooling pipeline.

2. A swage fitting for use in a liquid cooling system according to claim 1, wherein: The limiting buckle (2) is a non-integrated buckle, which is fixed to the pipeline (1) by extrusion process.

3. The expansion joint for a liquid cooling system according to claim 1, characterized in that: The limiting buckle (2) is an integrated buckle, and the integrated buckle has an inverted conical cylindrical structure.

4. The expansion joint for a liquid cooling system according to claim 1, characterized in that: The pipeline (1) is a joint of multiple functional areas integrally formed by a metal pipe through a processing technology. The joint includes a sealing section, a boss section and a connecting section in sequence from the first end to the second end along its axial direction.

5. A liquid cooling system expansion joint according to claim 1, characterized in that: The pipeline (1) is an aluminum alloy extruded tube, and the non-integrated buckle has asymmetrically distributed protrusions.

6. The expansion joint for a liquid cooling system according to claim 1, characterized in that: When the pipeline (1) is fixed to the liquid cooling plate, the bottom end of the welding seat (4) is on the same horizontal plane as the contact surface of the pipeline (1) and the liquid cooling plate, so as to achieve neat parallelism of the fixing surface.

7. A liquid cooling system expansion joint according to claim 4, characterized in that: The sealing section is formed by radial plastic expansion of the pipe wall of the pipeline (1) through a pipe expansion process, and its outer wall constitutes a precision sealing surface for sealing and fitting the sealing ring in the female connector.

8. A liquid cooling system expansion joint according to claim 4, characterized in that: The boss section is formed by cold forging to locally thicken the pipe wall of the pipeline (1) radially. Its outer diameter is larger than the outer diameter of other parts of the joint, and one end face of the boss section constitutes the axial limiting surface when the joint is inserted into the liquid cooling system.

9. A liquid cooling system expansion joint according to claim 4, characterized in that: The connecting section is located on the side of the boss section away from the sealing section, and it is fixed to the liquid cooling plate by welding and adhesive bonding through the welding seat (4).

10. A liquid cooling system expansion joint according to claim 4, characterized in that: The outer diameter tolerance grade of the sealing section after the expansion tube forming process is greater than IT9, and the surface roughness Ra is less than 1.6μm to achieve a leak-free seal. The wall thickness of the boss section formed by the cold heading process is 1.5-3 times that of the wall thickness of its adjacent pipe body.

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