EV battery-pack thermal simulation
A thermal simulation workbench for comparing EV battery-pack layouts, cooling strategies, operating loads, and cell-temperature uniformity.
Project definition
Problem statement
Battery cells generate heat during charging and discharge, and pack geometry, contact resistance, ambient conditions, and cooling flow affect peak temperature and temperature difference between cells.
The engineering problem is to construct a computationally manageable thermal model, verify its numerical behaviour, and compare design choices without presenting the result as a certified pack design.
Project objectives
- Model selected cell arrangement, material layers, thermal properties, contacts, and cooling boundaries.
- Convert prepared current or drive-cycle profiles into documented cell heat-generation inputs.
- Calculate transient cell and pack temperatures under air, cold-plate, or simplified cooling cases.
- Compare peak temperature, temperature uniformity, cooling energy proxy, and thermal response.
- Verify the solver with analytical, mesh, time-step, and energy-balance checks.
System design
System modules
Pack configurator
Defines cells, spacing, materials, interfaces, thermal properties, sensors, and boundary conditions.
Load and heat model
Transforms prepared current, resistance, entropy, and state assumptions into heat-generation profiles.
Thermal solver
Solves the selected lumped or discretised transient heat equations under recorded numerical settings.
Cooling model
Applies convective, cold-plate, or simplified channel boundary conditions and cooling effort estimates.
Design dashboard
Shows temperature fields, cell traces, hotspots, gradients, energy checks, and parameter comparisons.
Methodology
System workflow
- 01Configure pack
The student selects a prepared geometry, cell data, materials, and cooling arrangement.
- 02Load duty cycle
A current profile and initial and ambient conditions produce the heat-input series.
- 03Run baseline
The solver calculates transient pack and cell temperatures and energy balance.
- 04Change design
Spacing, interface, flow, plate, or control parameters are varied under the same duty cycle.
- 05Verify and compare
Numerical checks and thermal results identify the documented design tradeoff.
Demonstration scenario
A prepared battery module follows an urban drive cycle under natural convection. The baseline develops a central hotspot. A cold-plate case and a changed cell spacing are simulated with the same load, and the dashboard compares peak temperature, uniformity, cooling proxy, and numerical energy balance.
Engineering
Technical architecture
- Web application
- Nuxt and Vue for pack setup, duty-cycle charts, temperature maps, cell traces, and comparisons.
- Simulation API
- FastAPI for models, solver jobs, parameter sweeps, validation cases, results, and exports.
- Data layer
- PostgreSQL for pack versions, materials, profiles, solver settings, runs, and summary metrics.
- Thermal engine
- Python, NumPy, and SciPy for lumped or finite-difference energy equations, boundary conditions, and integration.
- Verification
- Analytical thermal cases, energy conservation, grid and time-step sensitivity, and prepared reference curves.
Testing
Evaluation
Evaluation measures
- Peak cell temperature and maximum cell-to-cell temperature difference
- Energy-balance residual and numerical stability
- Agreement with analytical and prepared reference cases
- Mesh or node and time-step independence
- Sensitivity to heat generation, material, contact, ambient, and cooling assumptions
- Simulation time across pack sizes, time steps, and parameter sweeps
System boundaries
- The workbench uses simplified thermal and heat-generation models under documented assumptions.
- It does not model cell electrochemistry, abuse, propagation, crash, sealing, or complete vehicle integration.
- Results require experimental validation before physical design decisions.
- The project is not a battery safety certification or a controller for a real pack.
Included
- 01Battery geometry, material, load, and cooling interface
- 02Thermal solver, parameter-sweep, and validation modules
- 03Temperature field, hotspot, uniformity, and energy dashboards
- 04Prepared pack configurations, drive cycles, and simulation results
- 05Complete source code in a private GitHub repository
- 06Complete project documentation with synopsis, abstract, methodology, thermal-model diagrams, simulation results, screenshots, and conclusion
- 07Setup and usage guide
Project record
No buyer information is collected on this page.
- Permanent project ID
- GP-ME-02VUMAA
- Catalogued
- 21 Aug 2026
- Completed
- Pending
- Verified
- Pending
- Demonstration
- Added when ready
Handover
After purchase
- 01Payment is confirmed
The project is marked unavailable and cannot be purchased again.
- 02Repository access is granted
The buyer's submitted GitHub account receives access to the private repository.
- 03The purchase record is delivered
The certification sheet is prepared from the reviewed buyer details and sent privately by email.