Effects of the different air cooling strategies on cooling performance of a lithium-ion battery module with baffle

[Display omitted] •The thermal characteristic of the 60-cell battery module is investigated.•Different air cooling strategies are investigated by changing the inlet and outlet location.•The baffle is used to improve the air flow distribution in the 60-cell battery module.•The best cooling performance in the 60-cell battery module is achieved. In this work, the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method and lumped model of single cell are used to investigate the thermal characteristic of the 18650 battery module which consists of 60 pieces of cells and standard battery holders. The air cooling performance of the battery module with the impedance of the battery holder is explored. Different air cooling strategies are investigated by changing the relative positions of air flow inlet and outlet to acquire the best cooling way. Then, in order to improve the performance of the air cooling with lateral inlet and outlet, the baffle is used to improve the air flow distribution. The temperature distributions of the module are discussed using transient simulation, and the results indicate that the cooling performance of inlet and outlet located on the different sides is better than on the same side and the use of the baffle plate can highly improve the thermal performance of air cooling strategies with the lateral inlet and outlet. When the air flow inlet and outlet located on the different sides of the case with the use of the baffle, the best cooling performance is achieved.