Li-ion battery pack cooling using Phase changing material

Hello,

I am planning to implement battery pack cooling using phase changing material using Simscape, Could anyone please pointout or refer any example files or reference models from Mathworks.

It will help me a lot to start with.

Regards

Chinmaya

[Yifeng Tang]

Hi Chinmaya,

Just to get some clarification: does the material change phase between solid and liquid, or liquid and gas? And, when it's in liquid and/or gas phase, does it flow or it stays in place and provide more effective thermal inertia?

[Chinmaya]

Hi Yifeng,

The material changes from solid tp liquid, and when its in liquid phase it stay in place.

Regards

Chinmaya

Answer 1

[Yifeng Tang]

Hi Chinmaya,

This will involve some customization in Simscape language.

The simpliest implementation is to make a custom block based on the .ssc code of a thermal mass block, and make the specific heat an input instead of a parameter. Then use a PS lookup table to map temperature to the specific heat, where the Cp shoots up over a narrow range of temperature near the melting temperature and then comes down to single-phase Cp values. The integral of Cp*dT needs to match the latent heat.

Below are a few possible further enhancements, ordered by levels of difficulty in my opinion:

1. make Cp(T) a parameter for the custom block and put the lookup function inside the .ssc code.
2. define specific enthalpy vector h(T) instead of Cp(T) inside the custom block. You'll rewrite the governing equation as something like: Q == m * h.der
3. instead of "faking" the phase change as a sudden jump in enthalpy over a small range, use "modechart" in Simscape language to define the melting and solidification behavior AT the phase change temperature.

Hope this helps.

[Chinmaya]

Thank you for the insights Yifeng, I will try one of the above method, which is more feasible.