Bio-Inspired Liquid-Cooled Plates for Enhanced Local Hotspot Dissipation in Lithium-Ion Battery Thermal Management

To enhance the thermal management of lithium-ion batteries in new-energy vehicles, various bio-inspired liquid-cooled plate channel designs were investigated to improve hotspot dissipation within the laminar flow regime. A series of three-dimensional numerical simulations were conducted to compare leaf vein-, tree branch-, honeycomb-, and spider web-inspired channels, followed by further optimization to improve thermohydraulic performance. The selected optimized bio-inspired channels were subsequently evaluated against conventional structures. Simulation results indicate that the honeycomb-inspired liquid-cooled plate channel achieved the best performance, followed by the tree branch- and spider web-inspired channels, which exhibited comparable thermohydraulic performance. The leaf vein-inspired channel demonstrated the lowest performance. The key design element for enhanced heat dissipation is the inclusion of longitudinal branch channels, which minimize flow zones with near-zero velocity and effectively mitigate local hotspots. Furthermore, the combination of longitudinal and inclined branch channels can redirect flow direction and enhance fluid mixing. Compared with the conventional channel widely adopted in existing studies, within the Reynolds number range of 260 to 920, the optimized honeycomb-inspired liquid-cooled plate channel achieves a 44.0–49.3% increase in Nusselt number and an 81% enhancement in comprehensive performance metric. Concurrently, thermal resistance is diminished by 2.6–9.2%, and pumping power is reduced by 50.0–56.8%.