Performance analysis of axial air cooling system with shark-skin bionic structure containing phase change material

Abstract To improve the cooling efficiency and temperature consistency of battery module, a novel heat sink inspired by shark-skin microstructure is proposed to apply in battery thermal management system (BTMS), which is combined with axial air cooling and phase change material (PCM). The surface of the shark-skin bionic heat sink shows a number of regularly arranged and hollow raised structures. The cavities of these raised structures are filled with PCM. The effect of the structure parameters of shark-skin bionic structure on the cooling performance is investigated using validated computational fluid dynamic method. When the shape, height, length and interval of shark-skin bionic structure are triangular, 3 mm, 7 mm and 2.5 mm, respectively, the maximum temperature (Tmax) and temperature difference (ΔT) of battery module are control to 308.98 K and 3.21 K, while the consumption energy is 34.57 J. As compared with the normal case, the Tmax and ΔT of shark-skin bionic sink are reduced by 5.49 K and 4.11 K, respectively. Then, a method is proposed to optimize the height distribution of bionic structure. After the height distribution of bionic structure for battery module is optimized for seven times, its ΔT and energy consumption are reduced to 1.22 K and 26.81 J, while its Tmax is 309.19 K. Furthermore, the BTMS exhibits reliable cooling performance under different ambient temperatures and dynamic conditions.