Self-adapting J-type air-based battery thermal management system via model predictive control

Abstract Battery thermal control plays an indispensable role in terms of the safety and performance for electric vehicles. For air-based cooling technologies, one of the most pressing challenges is to balance the temperature uniformity and constrain the maximum temperature simultaneously under varying driving conditions. This paper proposes a self-adaptive intelligent neural network-based model predictive control strategy for a J-type air-based battery thermal management system. The J-type structure is first optimized through surrogate-based optimization to improve the temperature uniformity before control. Based on the optimized J-type configuration, an operation mode switching module is developed to mitigate the temperature unbalance. The thermal control approach is tested using an integrated driving cycle, and its evaluations are threefold: (i) the neural network-based control without mode switching fails to meet the thermal requirements; (ii) the control with mode switching succeeds in constraining the maximum temperature and maintaining the temperature uniformity within 1.33 K; (iii) the added model predictive control approach slightly enhances the thermal performance but improves the energy efficiency significantly by 15.8%. The results show that the J-type structure with its appropriate control strategy is a promising solution for light-duty electric vehicles using an air-cooling technology.