Battery Pack Cooling Structure for Uniform Cell Surface Temperatures
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing battery packs face challenges in efficiently cooling multiple surfaces of battery cells, particularly the side and bottom surfaces, leading to temperature deviations and potential local deterioration, which can affect performance and operational life.
Innovation Solution
A battery pack design incorporating pack cases with flow path plates and tank plates that cover the side and bottom surfaces of battery cells, facilitating cooling medium flow across these surfaces to enhance heat dissipation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Device complexity
If battery packs use conventional cooling structures cooling only bottom surfaces, then the structure is simple, but temperature deviations and local deterioration occur
Solution Approach 1:
The cooling structure is segmented into multiple independent cooling channels: bottom cooling plates for bottom surface cooling, and side cooling plates for side surface cooling. This segmentation allows each component to focus on cooling specific surfaces, achieving comprehensive cooling without excessive overall complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The cooling approach transitions from two-dimensional bottom-only cooling to three-dimensional multi-surface cooling by adding side cooling plates that extend along the side surfaces of battery cells, enabling heat dissipation from multiple spatial dimensions simultaneously.
2Device complexity
If battery packs cool only bottom surfaces, then the cooling structure is simple, but heat dissipation efficiency is insufficient
Solution Approach 1:
The cooling system is divided into separate bottom cooling and side cooling segments, with dedicated cooling plates and flow channels for each, allowing simultaneous multi-surface heat dissipation while maintaining manageable structural complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The cooling system extends from planar bottom-surface cooling to volumetric multi-surface cooling by incorporating side cooling plates that wrap around battery cell sides, increasing the effective heat dissipation surface area and efficiency.
3Reliability
If battery packs use multi-surface cooling structures, then temperature uniformity improves, but the structure becomes complex
Solution Approach 1:
Multiple cooling functions (bottom cooling and side cooling) are merged into a single integrated cooling medium circulation system, where one cooling medium flows through both bottom and side cooling channels, achieving unified temperature control without proportionally increasing system complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The cooling medium serves multiple functions simultaneously by flowing through both bottom cooling plates and side cooling plates, providing comprehensive cooling across different battery cell surfaces with a single cooling system rather than separate independent systems.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The solution effectively reduces temperature deviations and alleviates local deterioration, improving performance and operational life by cooling all surfaces of the battery cells simultaneously.
Implementation Method 1
a flow path plate which is between the bottom surfaces of the battery cells in the two rows, and includes a plurality of flow paths accommodating a flow of a cooling medium, and first and second tank plates which define first and second connection tanks, respectively, that are fluidly connected to the plurality of flow paths
Implementation Method 2
a plurality of flow paths accommodating a flow of a cooling medium
Data Source
AI summary
A battery pack includes: a plurality of battery cells each including a terminal surface on which a terminal unit is arranged, a bottom surface opposite the terminal surface, and first and second side surfaces connecting the terminal surface to the bottom surface; and pack cases accommodating the plurality of battery cells in two rows such that the bottom surfaces face each other, and including a flow path plate which is between the bottom surfaces of the battery cells in the two rows, and including a plurality of flow paths accommodating a flow of a cooling medium, and first and second tank plates which define first and second connection tanks, respectively, that are fluidly connected to the plurality of flow paths, and which extend across the flow path plate from upper and lower portions of the flow path plate, respectively, to cover the first and second side surfaces.