Enhancing thermal management in electric commercial vehicles: A novel liquid-cooled Multiple Parallel-Serpentine channels

Electric commercial vehicles (ECVs) contribute to significant reductions in environmental pollution through their transition from fossil fuels to electric power, with large battery packs (LBPs) serving as the energy core. However, the performance of LBPs is highly temperature-dependent, requiring efficient thermal management to provide higher power output and extended range in specialized tasks of ECVs. To address this challenge, this paper proposes a Multiple Parallel-Serpentine (MPS) structure, a coolant circulating channel designed to enhance the cooling efficiency of LBPs. The MPS channel is designed by incorporating both parallel and serpentine channel features, and its parameters are optimized to improve flow characteristics using the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method. The thermal performance of the LBP is then simulated to analyze the cooling effect of the MPS channel. Moreover, experiments are conducted on real LBPs to compare theoretical predictions with real-world outcomes. This comparison is carried out under 1C charging and 1/3C discharging scenarios at a flow rate of 10 L/min. The results show maximum temperatures of 52.3°C in simulations and 56°C in actual conditions, with maximum temperature differences between modules of approximately 2.8°C in simulations versus 4°C in reality. These findings highlight the MPS channel's effectiveness in improving thermal management for LBPs in ECVs.