Effect of an impinging jet on the flow characteristics and thermal performance of mainstream in battery cooling of hybrid electric vehicles

The novel concept of impinging jet cooling, i.e., an active-passive air cooling strategy, was proposed to achieve improved battery thermal management in hybrid vehicles, and this method is supported by excess high pressure discharged air. To comprehensively realize the active-passive combined cooling behavior, a rectangular channel with a jet impingement hole was utilized to experimentally and numerically study the flow characteristics and thermal performance of the joint cooling mechanism. The numerical results were confirmed by the experimental data in this work, the maximum deviations of the offset and Nusselt numbers are 18.8% and 7.5%, respectively. The thermal transport performs much better under the interaction between the mainstream and impinging jet, i.e., the average Nusselt number and maximum Nusselt number can be increased by 0.43-16.55, 5.73-34.42, respectively, at inlet pressures of the impinging jet in the range of 1–6 bar. The values of Nu/Nu₀/(f/f₀) ^1/3 are improved by 1.52–3.33. The jet fluid was deflected under the influence of the mainstream and a vortex can be induced, which is beneficial for the heat transfer performance. The jet fluid closely reached the heated plane at a relatively large volume flow rate and the heat transfer performance was excellent once the jet fluid touched the heated plane. The thermal boundary layer becomes thinned under the impact of the impinging jet but the magnitude of the reduction is relatively slight.