Investigation of surface, bottom and tab cooling configurations on the thermal performance of prismatic electric vehicle batteries

The rapid growth of the electric vehicle (EV) market has increased the demand for robust battery thermal management systems to prevent overheating, thermal runaway and capacity loss of lithium-ion batteries. This study investigates the thermal performance of a prismatic 155 Ah NMX lithium-ion battery under bottom, side and tab cooling configurations, implemented individually and in combination, along with different flow directions. Because of its superior dielectric and thermal properties, transformer oil is used as the coolant to flow through minichannels, leading to a fire safe and cooling effective thermal management design. State of charge and thermal values of the designed coupled 1D electrochemical and 3D thermal model were validated against experimental data for charge and discharge conditions at 0.3C, ensuring high reliability. Taguchi design and the main effect analysis indicate that side cooling has the most significant impact on battery cooling, reducing the maximum temperature in the battery from 70.4 °C to 27.2 °C during 1C charging. In addition, implementing all cooling configuration further reduced the maximum temperature to 25.9 °C with improved temperature uniformity. The study contributes to the development of safer and more efficient battery thermal management for high-performance electric vehicle applications.