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

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 (Delta T) 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 Delta T 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 Delta T 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.