Thermal performance of honeycomb-type cylindrical lithium-ion battery pack with air distribution plate and bionic heat sinks

•Air distribution plate with bionic channel is designed in the honeycomb-type battery pack.•Temperature difference of battery module with air distribution plate is reduced by 7.0 K.•Installing bionic heat sinks enhance the temperature uniformity of the battery module.•An estimation method is proposed to analyze the temperature range of the battery pack. In this paper, the thermal performance of air-cooled battery thermal management (BTM) for honeycomb-type cylindrical lithium-ion battery pack is studied. The battery pack consists of twenty-four hexagonal battery modules, and the pipe network in battery pack transports cooling air to each battery module. Then, an air distribution plate (ADP) is designed for the battery module to improve temperature consistency, and the cooling performance and velocity distribution are studied numerically with computational fluid dynamics (CFD). As compared with the normal battery module without ADP at inlet velocity of 12 m/s and discharge rate of 3C, the maximum temperature and temperature difference of ADP battery module are reduced by 1.7 K and 7.0 K, respectively. Meanwhile, improving the structure of the ADP and installing some bionic heat sinks in the spaces of batteries can maintain the temperature difference of the battery module within 2 K. In addition, an estimation method is proposed to analyze the temperature range of the battery pack, which uses a simplified model to simulate the relationship between the inlet velocity and pressure drop of battery module. The estimation results show that the temperature difference of battery pack with optimal design of pipe arrangement can be controlled to 2.5 K.