A Thermal Investigation of Heat Sink with Dimple in Battery Cooling for Electric Motorbike Application

The research addresses environmental and climate change issues by exploring sustainable solutions in electric transportation, specifically electric motorbikes. One of the key challenges in the transition to zero-emission vehicles is the effective management of battery heat. This study examines passive Thermal management of cooling mechanisms: normal heat sink, convex dimpled heat sink, and concave-convex dimpled heat sink, using a numerical approach with computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The battery pack contains 10 LiFePO4 batteries with a heat sink fixed to one side. Air was employed as the working fluid under turbulent flow. The study finds that the battery temperature was reduced slightly using the dimples. The convex-dimpled heat sink outperforms the concave-convex-dimpled heat sink in terms of cooling performance, although the significance of the dimple variation is relatively small. This is caused by convex dimple disrupts the boundary layer and increases heat transfer, while the concave dimple creates a dead zone vortex, weakening heat transfer.