My Research Highlights

Theoretical Investigations

Effective thermal conductivity modelling of PCM embedded with metal foams:

The research presents geometrical effective thermal conductivity (ETC) models for externally coated open-cell metal foams (MFs) saturated with fluid/phase change material (PCM) by considering three-dimensional configuration adopted from the tetrakaidecahedron structure.

The three-dimension (3D) models consider different geometries, such as hexagonal and square, involving different shapes of ligaments (cylindrical, concave triprism) and nodes (cubic, pyramidal) for the analysis.

The ETC of MF-composite increases with the coating thickness, the thermal conductivity of coating material, and infiltrating medium. The percentage enhancement in ETC is found to be significant with the increase in coating thickness compared with the increase in thermal conductivity of coating material and infiltrating medium.

Experimental Investigation

Aim is to develope phase change composite (PCC) with advanced properties for battery thermal management. The PCC should have higher latent heat, thermal conductivity, shape and form stability with flame retarding and anti-leakage properties in order to be applied to battery thermal management systems.
The developed phase change composite has depicted excellent anti-leakage, shape stability and thermal management properties.
The test facility consist of programmable DC power supply and electronic load to charge and discharge the battery cell. The power supply and electronic load has a capacity of 0-60V/0-60A and 0-120V/0-120A, respectively. K type thermocouples are use to measure the temperature during the experiements. Agilent 34972A data logger is used to record the temperature with a frequency of 5 seconds.
The composite has been tested with cylindrical Li-ion batteries, and various experiments are currently ongoing for PCM preparation, its characterization.

Numerical Investigation

Numerical modeling and analysis of battery pack using multiscale multidomain approach.
Investigation of the thermal performance of phase change composite for thermal management of battery modules for various thermal loading conditions and thermal abusive conditions such as internal and external shorting conditions. The incoporation of Metallic foams (MF) is investigated using the porous media technique and it was found that presence of MF assists in improving the thermal performance of phase change material. Along with this, numerical models are being developed to valdate with the inhouse experiemntal results and then to carry out large scale battery pack simulations.