Honeycomb-inspired design of a thermal management module and its mitigation effect on thermal runaway propagation

The mitigation of battery thermal runaway propagation remains challenging in the application of lithium-ion batteries, and safety enhancement remains a popular topic for battery thermal management. In this study, an aluminum honeycomb (AH) design module is proposed for a battery thermal management module, and its effects on thermal management (TM) and thermal runaway (TR) propagation are experimentally studied using an infrared imager. The results showed that AH contributed to an improved heat dissipation effect and thus mitigated thermal runaway propagation. In addition, the coupling effects of AH as well as forced convection and the phase change material (PCM) were investigated. The results indicated that the coupling effects of the AH and forced air along with the PCM both exhibited superior performance as compared to the AH alone. In a forced convection environment, the maximum temperature of the AH cell could be reduced by 17.1% under a moderate charging rate. In addition, under extreme conditions, AH was shown to mitigate TR propagation. We anticipate that the outcomes of this study can provide a new basis for the structural design of battery modules to achieve better performance and fire safety.