Performance study of cooling plates with single and double outlets for lithium-ion battery thermal management system based on topology optimization

Topology optimization is a technique employed to optimize the distribution of material within a design domain to produce structures with enhanced performance. This study has compared three types of cooling plate designs, such as the topology optimized cooling plates with double-outlet and single-outlet and the conventional straight-channel cooling plate. The topology optimizations are performed under identical boundary conditions, and the subsequent performance comparison among all the designs is carried out based on a numerical analysis by developing a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics model. The effects of fluid inlet conditions such as velocity and temperature on the behavior of all the designs are investigated, and the performance comparison is also carried out based on temperature, pressure, and velocity distribution. The results show that the topology optimized double-outlet design (DOD) has decreased the maximum temperature by 1.185 K and 0.445 K, mean temperature by 0.604 K and 0.221 K, surface maximum temperature difference by 9.04% and 4.49%, and pressure drop by 5.32% and 33.43%, with respect to the topology optimized single-outlet design and conventional straight-channel design, at a Reynolds number of 213.71.