A numerical study of a novel centrally bifurcated mini-channel liquid cooling plate for enhanced heat transfer characteristics

•Constructed a novel liquid cooling plate based on bifurcated from the center to the periphery.•The effects of main channel width, branch channel width, branch angle and branch position are studied.•LCP with the arrangement of double inlets and double outlets shows the optimal performance.•The new LCP effective to solve the large pressure drop and poor temperature distribution uniformity. Temperature rise and poor temperature consistency of lithium-ion batteries due to heat accumulation affect the safe application of batteries. Mini-channel structured liquid cooling plates (LCP) with excellent battery thermal management effects is investigated. In order to obtain a better temperature management effect and temperature consistency at lower pressure drops, a double-layer mini-channel structure LCP bifurcated from the center to the periphery is innovatively designed. Using the simulation software, the impact of the novel LCP's structural elements on battery thermal management efficiency is studied. According to research, the LCP with a double-inlet and double-outlet arrangement provides the best temperature control while requiring the lowest pressure drop. With a 25.7 Pa pressure drop, the LCP can decrease the maximum temperature and maximum temperature difference of the battery to 38.83 °C and 6.57 °C during discharging at 2C. Subsequently, the effects of main channel width, branch channel structural elements and inlet mass flow rate on the performance of the LCP are investigated. Compared to the structural elements, the inlet mass flow rate has more influence on the effectiveness of battery thermal management. However, when the inlet mass flow rate is increased to more than 0.8 g ·s−1, the influence gets less significant. Compared to the other four structural LCPs, the batteries maximum temperature and maximum temperature differences while discharging at 2C are the lowest at 0.8 g ·s−1 inlet mass flow rate with just 152 Pa pressure drop, 33.64 °C and 6.89 °C, respectively. All of these findings could be help to optimize the structure design of mini-channel liquid cooling plates used to battery thermal management.