Design of a high performance liquid-cooled lithium-ion battery pack for automotive applications

This thesis explores the design of a water cooled lithium ion battery module for use in high power automotive applications such as an FSAE Electric racecar. The motivation for liquid cooling in this application is presented with an adiabatic battery heating simulation followed by a discussion of axial cooling based on the internal construction of an 18650 battery cell. A novel design is proposed, implementing soldering the negative terminal of electroplated 18650 battery cells directly to a metal core printed circuit board material as the critical cell-to-water interface that provides high thermal conductivity while maintaining electrical isolation. Cold plate design, sealing, and manufacturing is discussed and implemented concluding with pressure and leak testing of a scale test article. Cell soldering efficacy is explored through testing of various low temperature solder alloys, fluxes, and surface plating to make recommendations on full scale module builds. A single cell test article is constructed and tested to validate thermal performance expectations with preliminary results suggesting constant power discharge rates of up to 60 W per cell is possible without overheating, which greatly exceeds the power requirements of existing FSAE Electric vehicles built by MIT Motorsports. Further work is needed to quantify solder joint reliability and examine thermal gradients present at the full module and pack scales.

Name thesis:degree_name

Bachelor

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Perrin, Ethan(Ethan B.)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Ian W. Hunter.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/127894

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/127894