Integrating 2D topology optimization and 3D parametric design for high-performance liquid-cooled battery thermal management system

Optimal thermal management is essential for the safety of battery modules. Many researches on liquid-cooled BTMS designs remain limited by oversimplified 2D channel layouts and the lack of unified 2D–3D optimization. This work proposes a novel hybrid optimization framework consisting of topology optimization and parametric optimization. Firstly, topology optimization is used for the optimal design of the 2D layout of the cooling channel. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of the BTMS is developed to investigate temperature and pressure distribution. Four genetic programming (GP) models are established to calculate the BTMS performance. A surrogate-assisted multi-objective optimization framework driven by the Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II) is employed to optimize the BTMS 3D structure. Results show that the thickness of the cooling plate between the cell and the coolant is the dominant factor affecting the heat dissipation and pressure drop (PD). The optimized BTMS can achieve an ideal performance with the maximum temperature rise decreases from 5.176 K to 5.048 K, the average temperature slightly increases to 299.430 K (by 0.087 K), the standard deviation of temperature distribution increases to 2.563 K (by 0.003 K), and the PD is reduced from 62.868 Pa to 46.927 Pa (a 25.36% reduction).