The scope of our research includes but not limited to constructal design in thermal management, heat transfer enhancement with passive and active techniques and so forth.

Battery thermal management

We propose a sandwich-like heat exchanger that can be used for thermal management of electric vehicle batteries. The heat exchanger comprises of two heap pipe plates contacting with the electrode areas, which function as heat spreaders for both heating and cooling purpose, as shown in Figure. A liquid which has the expected properties (appropriate saturate temperature, vaporization latent heat, viscosity, etc.) will serve as two-phase flow working fluid inside the heat pipe plates to heat/cool the battery packs. Inside the heat pipe, micropillars are designed with respect to the modulation of the two-phase flow behavior, to provide best performance of heating or cooling. The working fluid from the heat source end to the heat sink end is driven by capillary force and can operate under long-distance.

This project introduces the concept of combining the new functional micropillar surface structure and phase-change and proposes a new nanotechnology-based micropillar sandwich structure to achieve super-fast warming-up of the electric vehicle batteries in the winter and cooling the batteries in summer. The subject of this interdisciplinary research relates to fluid mechanics, surface wetting, nanotechnology and mechanical design, which involves knowledge about evaporation and condensation. This topic has innovation and academic significance, and the outcomes would contribute to practical engineering applications.