Development of a two-dimensional thermal model for Li-ion battery pack with experimental validation

This paper reports the development of a two-dimensional two states (2D2S) model for the analysis of thermal behaviors of Li-ion battery packs and its experimental validation. This development was motivated by the need to fill a niche in our current modeling capabilities: the need to analyze 2D temperature (T) distributions in large-scale battery packs in real time. Past models were predominately developed to either provide detailed T information with high computational cost or provide real-time analysis but only 1D lumped T information. However, the capability to model 2D T field in real time is desirable in many applications ranging from the optimal design of cooling strategies to onboard monitoring and control. Therefore, this work developed a new approach to provide this desired capability. The key innovations in our new approach involved modeling the whole battery pack as a complete thermal-fluid network and at the same time calculating only two states (surface and core T) for each cell. Modeling the whole pack as a complete network captured the interactions between cells and enabled the accurate resolution of the 2D T distribution. Limiting the calculation to only the surface and core T controlled the computational cost at a manageable level and rendered the model suitable for packs at large scale with many cells. © 2019 by ASME.