Battery Cooling Plates

Heat is created when either charging or discharging batteries which can lead to reduced life or catastrophic failure at high temperatures. Heat is generated from the internal resistance of the battery which is called Joule or Ohmic heating. The current standard is to use liquid cooling. These water-glycol coolants can either be passed in-between cells, battery packages or the usage of cooling plates to manage the heat being generated. Typical cooling plate designs have a large temperature gradient across the heat exchanger surface offering inconsistent battery cooling. Consistent cooling across battery cooling plates is critical to manage these temperatures. Senior Flexonics has developed a unique two pass battery cooling plate design that provides a maximum of 3°C degree delta across the entire contact surface. Cooling plates are constructed from a variety of materials including stainless steel and aluminum. We are developing cooling plates and fluid conveyance solutions in partnership with well-known truck and passenger car manufacturers.

Heat Sinks

Battery Thermal Management

The current generation of electric vehicle batteries needs to be managed effectively.  The current standard is to use liquid cooling. These water-glycol coolants can either be passed in between cells, battery packages or even through a cooling plate to manage the heat being generated. Typical cooling plate designs have a large temperature gradient across the heat exchanger surface offering inconsistent battery cooling. In contrast, our unique two pass battery cooling plate design provides a maximum of 3°C degree delta across the entire contact surface.

Power Inverters and IGBTs (insulated gate bipolar transistors)

Electric vehicles demand high efficiency and performance. The power inverter is one of the critical components in an electric vehicle. The inverter converts DC to AC when power is required to drive the electric motors, and converts in the opposite direction during regenerative braking. The main component inside the inverter is the IGBT (insulated gate bipolar transistor), and it generates heat. An effective method of cooling the IGBT is through a liquid cooled heat sink.

The IGBT heatsink is made up of a base plate, cover plate, and fin. Coolant enters through a spigot in the cover plate and then flows across the fin and exits through the spigot on the opposite side. The base plate sits on top of the IGBT to allow for surface contact cooling.

Increasing the heat sinks ability to transfer heat is important to achieve the increasing demands for reducing size and increasing current of the IGBT.

Senior Flexonics’ “Omega Fin” design was created in order to solve the challenge of increasing the performance of the heatsink while maintaining a minimum gap for particle size. The Omega fin works by increasing the amount of fin surface area inside the heatsink.

Omega Fin Design Benefits

• Developed to increase performance
  while maintaining a minimum gap for
  particle size
• More surface area can be utilized
  with the Omega fin
• Straight fin design has 9 fins while the
  Omega fin design has 12 fins a 33%
  increase

Key Benefits

• Full service supplier.
• Full collaboration with customers to provide products.
• A fully engineered solution, from design concept through to high volume manufacture.
• Global production facilities, 30 operations in 13 countries.
• Extensive range of thermal management solutions.
• Programs managed using APQP framework.
• Comprehensive fleet of FEA and CFD software.
• Fully equipped test lab for validation testing.
• Performance and durability test equipment.
• ISO 9001 / 14001 and IATF 16949 certification.

Features

• Better durability
• Better corrosion resistant properties
• Improved wear properties
• Wide material selection