The Challenges of Hybrid & Electric Vehicle Cooling and 1D Thermo-Fluid Solution to System Design

ABSTRACT

This presentation sets out to demonstrate how the Flowmaster V7 thermo-fluid simulation tool can be applied to the increasingly important challenge of modeling of battery cooling systems for Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEV) and Electric Vehicles (EV). It also considers both the technical and commercial benefits of using 1D CFD simulation early in the Product Delivery Life Cycle, as well as providing an overview of Flowmaster capabilities and how they can be applied to the System Design Process.

This important background sets the scene for the primary focus of the presentation, which is to explore a case study for modeling battery pack cooling, and how Flowmaster tools and techniques can be applied. The Case Study specifically discusses:

• The design challenges, and relative advantages/disadvantages of Liquid versus Air cooling strategies for battery packs.
• The many design considerations on the battery pack itself and how they impact of cooling system specification.
• How Flowmaster’s flexible modeling approach can be successfully applied to create composite models of the Battery Pack (and its individual cells), and understand the:
  • Complex interaction between multiple vehicle thermal systems
  • Cooling requirements at peak conditions
  • Battery pack warm up transient analysis
• The use of Flowmaster’s ‘Variable Parameters’ tool to conduct a parametric study, and typical results produced from an EV cooling network.
• Typical HEV cooling network layouts and their sub-systems