Eventos Anais de eventos
COBEM 2023
27th International Congress of Mechanical Engineering
Numerical development of a passive heat exchanger for electric vehicle batteries using Phase Change Material (PCM).
Submission Author:
Luis Gonçalves , SP
Co-Authors:
Luis Gonçalves, Guilherme Borges Ribeiro
Presenter: Luis Gonçalves
doi://10.26678/ABCM.COBEM2023.COB2023-1546
Abstract
This study focuses on the development of electric vehicles, where batteries play a significant role. Over the years, improvements in battery technology have been made, focusing on parameters such as weight, storage, and operating temperature. This latter aspect is a crucial factor affecting battery performance, lifetime, and safety, making it necessary to have an effective thermal management system to control temperature setpoint and reduce peak temperature. In this regard, the use of phase change material (PCM) as a passive technique is a promising technique to efficiently establish the thermal management system without additional power consumption. Although the use of PCM is still scarce, it is essential to develop new research to enhance the application of this material in line with the development of new technologies for electric vehicles. The objective of this work is to numerically analyze a new heat exchanger model for electric vehicles with a heat sink coupled to the PCM. The numerical model, developed and solved with Ansys Fluent 22R2, includes equations of conservation of mass, momentum, and energy. The fluid domain was designed as a bidimensional cartesian model to represent the physics of the problem coherently and reduce computational cost. A parametric analysis will be presented with various heat sink fin configurations to evaluate the variation of melting time and material temperature over time. The critical dimensionless parameters for this analysis will also be identified. The main objective is to assess the heat absorption capacity over time and evaluate the performance of the conjugate heat transfer between the heat sink and the fluid domain of the PCM. The results will identify the model with the highest global heat absorption capacity over the simulation time among the cases analyzed, varying the number of fins on the heat exchanger and their length. A mesh convergence study will also be conducted to analyze mesh independence, and the numerical model's robustness will be validated with experimental data.
Keywords
Phase Change Material, Computacional Fluid Dynamics, thermal system, Heat transfer, Battery Thermal Management Systems
