Numerical Analysis of Cooling Plates with Different

Structures for Electric Vehicle Battery

Thermal Management Systems
Ming Li 1; Jianchao Wang 2; Qin Guo 3; Yue Li 4; Qingfeng Xue 5; and Guihe Qin 6

Abstract: The performance of lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles (EVs) is greatly affected by temperature. Hence, an efficient
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battery thermal management system (BTMS) is needed to ensure the safety of batteries and prolong the cycle life. In order to find a more
efficient type of cooling plate for the rectangular batteries, the three-dimensional models of four common cooling plates with different internal
structures are established. After a series of computational fluid dynamic simulations and comparisons, the most optimum structure of the
cooling plate is obtained. Subsequently, the effect of different mass flow rates is investigated among the different cooling plates. It indicates
that the cooling plate with convex structure has a better cooling performance than the other three, and the heat transfer performance of various
cooling plates changes a lot with the increasing of mass flow rate. The convex structured cooling plate could be applied for optimizing
the performance for electric vehicles. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)EY.1943-7897.0000648. This work is made available under the terms of
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Author keywords: Electric vehicle; Battery thermal management system; Cooling plate; Simulation.

Introduction temperature fluctuations. A lithium-ion battery often exceeds its

With the rapid development of electric vehicles (EVs), the technical
requirements of lithium-ion batteries are constantly increasing (Ren
2018). How to ensure the long-term and efficient operation of EVs
has become a hot spot for many researchers. In order to meet the
needs of users for the endurance of EVs, battery technology is con-
stantly developing, and the energy density of batteries is also in-
creasing (Yuksel et al. 2016). Accordingly, the requirements for
a battery thermal management system (BTMS) should also increase
(Wang et al. 2016). At very high or low temperatures, the capacity
of a lithium-ion battery decreases greatly with increasing cycle
times. Ramadass et al. (2002) studied the capacity of batteries
under different charging and discharging cycle times. The research
showed that with the increase of batteries’ surface temperature,
the number of charge or discharge cycles of batteries decreased
a lot, and the batteries would aging more with the wide range of
1
Professor, State Key Laboratory of Automotive Simulation and
Control, Jilin Univ., Changchun 130025, China.
2
Graduate Student, College of Automotive Engineering, Jilin Univ.,
Changchun 130025, China.
3
Ph.D. Student, College of Computer Science and Technology, Jilin
Univ., Changchun, Jilin Province 130025, China (corresponding author).
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8754-3734. Email: guoqin16@mails
.jlu.edu.cn
4
Senior Engineer, Vehicle Development Dept., Product and Research
Center of First Automobile Work Shop, 1063 Chuangye St., Lvyuan
District, Changchun 130011, China.
5
Senior Engineer, Vehicle Development Dept., Product and Research
Center of First Automobile Work Shop, 1063 Chuangye St., Lvyuan
District, Changchun 130011, China.
6
Professor, College of Computer Science and Technology, Jilin Univ.,
Changchun, Jilin Province 130025, China.
Note. This manuscript was submitted on January 27, 2019; approved on
September 20, 2019; published online on June 10, 2020. Discussion period
open until November 10, 2020; separate discussions must be submitted for
individual papers. This paper is part of the Journal of Energy Engineering,
© ASCE, ISSN 0733-9402.
optimal operating temperature range because of the complex road
conditions, ambient environment, and driving habits of automo-
biles (Guo and Chen 2015). The C-rate is the charge or discharge
current divided by battery capacity. The rate 1C means that fully
charging or discharging a battery requires 1 h, while 2C means only
0.5 h is needed to complete it. It not only has a negative impact on
battery endurance, but a long time at a high temperature is more
likely to threaten our personal safety. For example, Flight JA829
was reported to be on fire and smoking in 2013 because of the bat-
tery thermal management out of control. In recent years, reports of
electric vehicle fire due to excessive battery temperature have also
been common occurrences. This has also aroused widespread con-
cern about the safety of electric vehicles (Situ et al. 2017).
According to the different cooling mediums, the cooling modes
of an EV lithium-ion battery are mainly divided into air-cooling
system, liquid-cooling system, and phase change material (PCM)
cooling system (Yuanwang et al. 2018; Wang et al. 2016). The
traditional air-cooling system is simple in structure, easy to arrange,
and has good cooling characteristics for the battery module. It can
be divided into active heat dissipation and passive heat dissipation
according to different air supply modes, that is, forced convection
heat transfer and natural convection heat transfer (Wang et al.
2015). The effect of active air cooling is better than that of passive
air cooling. Park (2013) optimized the design of hybrid vehicles
using forced air cooling, and found that the improved structure
can meet the cooling needs of lithium-ion batteries. Mahamud
and Park (2011) designed a variety of structures for air-cooled
systems to enhance heat transfer capacity. As far as pure EVs
are concerned, all the lithium-ion components on the vehicle need
batteries to provide lithium ion, which requires a more powerful
BTMS. Xu and He (2013) found that compared with the air speed
of 60 km=h, the average values of the battery maximum temper-
ature rise and internal maximum temperature difference decrease
by 10.4% and 6.3% at the speed of 70 km=h. The speed of the fan
cannot unlimitedly increase because the increase of wind speed
also means increasing the load of the fan, which has a great impact

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 on the mileage of the EV. Sabbah et al. (2008) found that with the
increase of heat production, the air-cooling system could not
quickly control the temperature of the battery within the optimal
range, and the temperature uniformity of the battery pack was
also poor.
PCMs could be another method to cool batteries. They could
absorb a lot of heat through the change from solid to liquid.
Because of the high performance of the heat dissipation of batteries,
many researchers showed great interest in optimizing them
(Samimi et al. 2016; Rao et al. 2015). Khateeb et al. (2004) simu-
lated and optimized the heat pipe, and found that the air-cooled
battery could meet the requirements of heat dissipation at low dis-
charge rates, while at high discharge rates, using PCMs is more
efficient than using the air-cooled method. The results show that
the optimal mass flow rate should be 0.0008 kg s−1 and the tran-
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sition point should be 308.15 K. But it is very difficult to keep
the temperature in the phase transition point. Before phase change,
the thermal physics of the materials are not so good. Besides, the
cost of the materials also limits the application of this technology
in the field of battery thermal management systems (Ianniciello
et al. 2018).
Because the thermal conductivity of liquids is much higher than
that of air, more and more experts and scholars focus on the study
of liquid cooling. According to the different types of refrigerants
used for heat transfer with batteries, the methods of cooling liquids
can also be divided into direct refrigerant cooling and indirect cool-
ing. Direct cooling is to absorb heat by evaporation of refrigerant,
which takes away the heat generated by the battery. The most
common form of indirect cooling mode is the heat pipe (Jiaqiang
et al. 2016). But this type is very difficult to install with batteries in
a such narrow space of EVs. As for the indirect cooling mode, most
of the batteries are cooled by water and ethylene glycol solution
(Liu et al. 2016; Jiaqiang et al. 2016).
Liquid cooling plate is an important direction in the research of
indirect contact BTMS. The design dimensions of the liquid cool-
ing plates are often related to the structure material and layout of the
battery, while the internal flow channel of the liquid-cooled plate
has a variety of forms. The most common form of cooling plate is
the serpentine coil with minichannel (Rao et al. 2015; Huo et al.
2015). Jarrett and Kim (2011) calculated the size of a rectangular
channel by numerical simulation and obtained the corresponding
optimal width form. Huo et al. (2015) optimized the performance
of the cooling plate by changing the number of channels. Zhao et al.
(2015) studied the influence of the length of the cooling plate
channels and the velocity of coolant. The results showed that
the increase of the length and velocity of the channel would lead
to the increase of the maximum temperature difference of the cool-
ant. At present, many researchers have optimized the length, width,
and corner radius of the liquid cooling plate in a rectangular chan-
nel. Panchal et al. (2017) presented a study of different inlet temper-
atures and discharge rates to compare the temperature and velocity.
They found that the velocity remains roughly the same. But the
temperature distribution increased a lot as the charge rate changed
from 1C to 2C. Patil et al. (2018) simulated another type of cold
plate that contains multiple channels in one plate, and concluded
that with the number of channels increased, the pressure drop
decreased a lot. Additionally, inlet temperatures of 298 and 288 K
were suggested to be applied for this type of cold plate when the
charge rate is 1C and 2C, respectively.
However, analysis and comparison of different structures of the
cooling plate are still rare. At present, the structure of the cooling
plate is relatively simple, and the channel structure of the cold plate
is relatively single. The heat transfer and fluid resistance of fluids
would be affected by different channel structures. Other types of
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BTMSs like metal foams cool batteries by increasing the heat trans-
fer area and then cooling the metal foam by air. However, the
mechanical properties of this method need to be improved (Saw
et al. 2017; Hussain et al. 2016; Mohammadian et al. 2015).
In this paper, four multichannel cooling plates with honeycomb
structure, U-shaped structure, airfoil structure, and convex structure
are designed according to the certain heating condition of a rectan-
gular battery pack. After a series of computational fluid dynamics
(CFD) simulations, the optimal cooling plate structure is selected
to meet the requirements of optimal heat transfer performance and
minimum pressure drop.
Design and Analysis of the Cooling Plate
Simulation Model
The structure of the liquid cooling plate is mainly designed accord-
ing to the size of the battery pack of an EV. The size of the cooling
plate is designed to be 620 × 340 × 4.5 mm (excluding the height
of the pipe at the inlet and outlet). The method of cooling the bot-
tom was chosen for this simulation, which is convenient for setting,
saving space, and easy repair. The structure of the cooling plate is
shown in Fig. 1. The area of the internal fluid is determined by the
structure of the battery and the fabrication of the cooling plate.
The total size of the cell is 600 × 310 × 2.5 mm.
The fluid regions of four different types of cooling plates are
shown in Fig. 2. The cooling plates were made of aluminum alloy,
which is widely used in various heat exchangers because of
its smaller density, better thermal conductivity, ductility, and easier
processing. Ethylene glycol was chosen for the coolant because of
its high boiling point and low freezing point. The thermal physical
properties of the materials are shown in Table 1. According to the
American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning
Engineers (ASHRAE 2004) lists, with the increase of mass concen-
tration, the freezing point of ethylene glycol decreases and the
boiling point increases. From Table 2 it can be seen that different
concentrations of ethylene glycol are always in the liquid state at
243–373 K, so the density can be assumed constant in a limited
temperature range.
Simulation Conditions
The commercial CFD simulation software STAR-CCM+ was used
for the simulation of cooling plates. STAR-CCM+ has the advan-
tages of simplicity, high integration, and high stability, so all the
grid generation and simulation processes were all completed in
it. The boundary conditions were set by the mass flow inlet, pres-
sure outlet, and wall heat flow in the simulation. During this
Fig. 1. (Color) Battery cooling plate with convex structure.
J. Energy Eng.
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Fig. 2. (Color) Different structures of cooling plate: (a) convex structure; (b) honeycomb structure; (c) airfoil structure; and (d) U-shaped structure.

Table 1. Thermal physical properties of cooling plate and coolant at 298.15 K

Density Dynamic viscosity Specific heat Thermal conductivity Thickness Length Width
Substance (kg m−3 ) (Pa · s) (J kg−1 K−1 ) (W m−1 K−1 ) (mm) (mm) (mm)
Fluid
50% ethylene glycol 1,071.11 0.00339 3,300 0.384 2.5 600 320
aqueous solution
Solid
Aluminum alloy 2,719 — 871 202 4.5 620 340

simulation, the flow rate was set to 0.0223 kg s−1 first, which was a
real value of the pump. The diameter of the inlet was set to 20 mm,
and the dynamic viscosity of the medium was 0.00339 Pa · s.
Therefore, the Reynolds number can be calculated by Eq. (1),
which is 432. Thus, the inlet condition can be seen as the laminar
flow. and the inlet temperature of the glycol solution was set to be
298.15 K. The capacity of the rectangular Li-ion battery was 100
Ah and the mean voltage was 3.66 V. The battery is shown in
Fig. 3(a). The heat generation inside the battery is a complex pro-
cess, so it is good to directly measure the heat flux of a battery in a
certain charge or discharge rate. When the battery pack discharged
at 1C, the heat flux on the bottom of the battery was tested by two
heat flow densitometers, and the location can be seen in Fig. 3(b).
Then the data were recorded every 10 min, and the average results
of five trials show the mean heat flux was 1,257.86 W m−2 .
Because the pack was sealed by the plastic, it can be assumed that
the heat could only be taken away by the cooling plate. The basic
information of the battery is given in Table 3
ρud
Re ¼
μ just simulate a single U-shaped channel, it also simulated many
The cooling plates were coupled with the bottom of battery
modules. The other sides of the plates were exposed to air inside
the battery box. Therefore, the heat resistance may include the ra-
diant heat resistance inside the box, the heat conduction resistance
of the battery box walls, and the heat convection resistance with
ambient air. Because of the complex heat transfer condition, it
can be assumed that the heat could only be taken away by the cool-
ant. The boundary condition can be seen in Fig. 4.
As shown in Fig. 4, the model was the conjugate heat transfer
model: only one direction of the plate can absorb the heat from
the battery, and the other outside surfaces of cooling plate are adia-
batic of surroundings. Then the heat is removed by the coolant.
Flow-related parameters (such as velocity) change with time,
and the flow of the fluid at this time is called unsteady flow.
The convergence variables are X-velocity, Y-velocity, Z-velocity,
continuity equation, and energy. The convergent criteria were
defined that all these residuals were less than 0.00001.
In this simulation, three factors were considered to evaluate the
performance of cooling plate: pressure drop (ΔP), maximum
temperature of cooling plate (T max ), and standard deviation of tem-
perature (T σ ). All three factors can be monitored by STAR-CCM+.
The pressure drop between the inlet and outlet reflects the
pump power consumption. The battery power will reduce with the
ð1Þ decreasing of the flow resistance of the coolant. This paper did not
different vortex generators inside the cooling plate. Fig. 5 shows
the drag force and resistance of fluid around a three-dimensional
object. Therefore, the formula for calculating the pressure drop
of an interior channel as follows:

F D ¼ Ff þ F p ð2Þ
Table 2. Freezing point and boiling point at different concentrations
Concentration Freezing point (K) Boiling point (K) where FD = total resistance; Ff = frictional resistance, which
0.0 273.2 373.2 is caused by the shearing stress from the vortex generator; and
10 270 374.3 Fp = pressure resistance, which is caused by the normal stress from
20 265.4 375.4 the vortex generator
30 259.1 377.6
40 250.9 378.8 ρu20 ρu20 ρu20
FD ¼ CD A ; Ff ¼ Cf A ; Fp ¼ Cz A
50 239.4 380.4 2 D 2 f 2 D
60 224.9 383.2
ð3Þ

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Fig. 3. (Color) Battery experiment: (a) battery setup; and (b) sensor locations.

Table 3. Battery properties

Property Value
Capacity (Ah) 100
Size (mm) 340 × 185 × 130
Energy density (Wh=kg) 210
Discharge 1C=100A
Cycle 2,000
Test standard 100% DOD, 1C=1C
Heat flux (W=m2 ) 1,257.86
Note: DOD = depth of discharge.

Fig. 5. (Color) Drag force and resistance of fluid around a three-

dimensional object.

where CD = total resistance coefficient; Cf = frictional resistance

coefficient; Cz = pressure resistance coefficient; ρ = density of cool-
ant; u0 = velocity of fluid; AD = projected area perpendicular to the
direction of flow; and Af = superficial area of the vortex generator.
And the pressure drop of the channel without a vortex generator is
as follows:
L ρu20
Δp ¼ λ ð4Þ
D 2

where λ ¼ 4Cf ; L = length of channel; D = hydraulic diameter of

the channel; and u0 = velocity of fluid.
The maximum temperature represents the most severe environ-
ment of the battery. Once the maximum temperature exceeds the
warning value, it will pose great danger to human life. The standard
deviation of temperature implies the uniformity of a battery’s tem-
Fig. 4. (Color) Boundaries of the cooling plate: (a) the whole plate
perature distribution. It is also an important factor to reflect the
conditions; and (b) front view of the plate.
performance of a battery

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 sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
P ffi
2 • Momentum conservation equations
N ðT N − T ave Þ AN
Tσ ¼ P ð5Þ
N AN
∂u ∂p
uÞ þ
divðρu~ ¼ ρfx þ divðμgraduÞ − ð7Þ
where N = number of surface grids; AN = area corresponding to ∂t ∂x
the different grids; T N = surface temperature (K) of a single grid;
and T ave = average temperature (K) of the section.
This research was mainly carried out under unsteady-state
∂v ∂p
conditions. The solution results are mainly iterated according to ~Þ þ
divðρvu ¼ ρf y þ divðμgradvÞ − ð8Þ
the continuity equation, momentum equation, and energy equation ∂t ∂y
of the fluid. The corresponding solution formulas are as follows:
• Mass conservation equation

∂ðρuÞ ∂ðρvÞ ∂ðρwÞ ∂ρ ∂w ∂p

þ þ ¼ ð6Þ ~Þ þ
divðρwu ¼ ρfz þ divðμgradwÞ − ð9Þ
∂x ∂y ∂z ∂t ∂t ∂z
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where ρ = density of the coolant (kg=m3 ); and u, v, and w = where u~ = velocity vector of the coolant (m=s); and fx , f y , and
velocity vectors of the refrigerant in three coordinates (m=s). f z = body force of the refrigerant in three coordinates.

(a) (b)

Fig. 6. (Color) Effects of different mesh sizes on simulation results: (a) pressure loss; and (b) outlet temperature.

Fig. 7. (Color) Mesh of cooling plate: (a) full domain; and (b) section.

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 • Energy conservation equation are discussed, and the total resistance of the monitoring system
is shown in Fig. 6. The resistance values of grids smaller than
4 mm are all around 714.2 Pa. Based on there being 7,950,000
 
∂T ∂T ∂T ∂T grids, the pressure drop and outlet temperature errors of grids over
ρ · Cp · þu· þv· þw· 1,000,000 are within 1%. In these simulations, it was found that
∂t ∂x ∂y ∂z
 2  all residual values can be kept below 3 × 10−5 after 10,000 steps.
2 2
∂ T ∂ T ∂ T Under the premise of ensuring accuracy and computational cost,
¼α· þ þ ð10Þ
∂x2 ∂y2 ∂z2 the minimum relative size was 15% and the mesh size was 2 mm.
Fig. 7 shows the meshing domain. The prism meshing parameters
where Cp = specific heat capacity [J=ðkg · °CÞ]; and α = thermal were set to initial height = 0.1, height ratio = 1.5, and number of
conductivity [W=ðm°CÞ]. layers = 3.
The accuracy of simulation is not only related to the choice of
model, it is also affected by the size of the grid and calculation step.
Because this research considered both the solid region and the fluid Results and Discussions
region, the interface of these two regions needed to use more prism
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layers to improve the convergence of the simulation. In order to

eliminate the influence of grid size on experimental results and
ensure unnecessary waste of computing resources. Seven different
grids from 570,000 to 7,950,000 were set up for one type of
cooling plate, the minimum relative size was 15% for the fillet
area, and the calculation step was 5,000 steps. Several grids
Effect of Different Structures
The coolant flowed from the left side of these cooling plates and out of
the right side. The inlet and outlet were both set in the top of the cool-
ing plates, which are convenient for manufacturing. As shown in
Fig. 8, the pressure loss (ΔP), the maximum temperature of cooling

Fig. 8. (Color) Effect of different structures: (a) pressure loss; (b) maximum temperature; and (c) standard deviation of temperature.

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Fig. 9. (Color) Temperature nephograms of cooling plates: (a) convex structure; (b) honeycomb structure; (c) airfoil structure; and (d) U-shaped
structure.

plate (T max ), and standard deviation of the temperature (T σ ) change
with the discharge of battery under the mass flow rate of 0.0223 kg=s.
It can be seen in Fig. 8(a) that the cooling plate with the convex
structure had the least resistance because of its more reasonable
structure, followed by the U-shaped structure, the airfoil structure,
and the honeycomb structure, which has the greatest resistance.
At the highest flow rate, the pressure loss of the honeycomb arrange-
ment exceeded 72.1% of the convex structure and 51.5% of the
airfoil structure under the same flow rate, which undoubtedly greatly
increases the power consumption, and it is unreasonable to adopt the
cooling plate with honeycomb structure and airfoil structure.
Fig. 8(b) shows the maximum temperature of the cooling
plate. It can be seen that all these structures displayed a similar
maximum temperature. The largest temperature was given by
the convex structure, which reached 305.1 K. The smallest temper-
ature was 304.5 K of the U-shaped structure. Therefore, the main
influence factors of the maximum temperature are not the structure
of the internal fluid. As shown in Fig. 9, we can clearly see that the
area on the right of the outlet is hotter. This is because as the fluid
flows inside the channel, it absorbs the heat from outside con-
stantly, so the temperature will increase along with the flow direc-
tion. Additionally, the edge of the cooling plate has the no fluid

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Fig. 10. (Color) Comparisons of the different structures with different mass flow rates: (a) pressure loss; (b) maximum temperature; and (c) standard
deviation of temperature.

through it. The area, as a result, would be the most dangerous part
of the battery.
The internal channel has little effect on the maximum temper-
ature of the cooling plate, but changes the standard deviation of the
temperature greatly. We can find that honeycomb structure not only
has the maximal resistance; it also has the worst temperature
uniformity. From Fig. 8(c) we can find the standard deviation is
0.98% smaller than the honeycomb structure. Except the honey-
comb structure, the other three structures behave with similar tem-
perature uniformity.
According to the preceding analysis, the cooling plate with the
convex structure can meet the requirements of minimum resistance
as well as the good heat transfer effect.
Effect of Different Flow Rates
As shown in Fig. 10, in order to explore the performance of cooling
plates with different mass flow rates, the inlet mass flow rates were
set as 0.00558, 0.1115, 0.0223, and 0.0446 kg=s; the simulation
range is wide enough to compare the four structures. The pressure
loss with different flow rates are shown in Fig. 10(a). The increase
of ΔP corresponds to Eq. (3), which is the quadratic function of the
mass flow rate. In the figure, we can see that the four kinds of cool-
ing plates have similar ΔP at low mass flow rate. Additionally, the
airfoil structure and honeycomb structure both increased more
quickly than the other two. In other words, in the case of power
consumption, neither the airfoil structure nor the honeycomb struc-
ture is the best choice.
In Fig. 10(b), the maximum temperature of the cooling plate
always appeared at the edge of the outlet. And the maximum
temperature of structures was less than 1 K at different mass flow
rates, so it can be inferred that most of those types of cooling
plates would have the same problem at a certain temperature.
At the same time, the different between the minimum and maxi-
mum temperatures should not surpass 10 K; otherwise, the bat-
teries’ efficiency would be affected and human lives could be
threatened. Therefore the mass flow rate of this situation should
be no less than 0.0223 kg=s.

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 As shown in Fig. 10(c), the honeycomb had the highest standard
deviation temperature of the structures. But with the mass flow
rates increase, the differences became smaller. This is because
ΔT between the inlet and outlet decreased as the velocity of fluid
increased. As for the other three structures, no matter how the mass
flow rates change, they all had the same value of T σ .
Conclusions
By comparing and analyzing four liquid-cooled plates, it was found
that the cooling plate with the convex structure has the lowest pres-
sure loss at different flow rates, and the cooling plate resistances of
the honeycomb structure and the airfoil structure were the largest.
The heat exchange capacities of several cooling plates were ba-
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sically the same, but the temperature uniformity of the honeycomb
structure was the worst and the cooling capacity of the cooling plate
was greatly affected by the flow rate. The maximum temperature of
these types of cooling plate always exists at a certain mass flow
rate, which can hardly be eliminated. In order to ensure the temper-
ature difference of the cooling plate inlet and outlet (≤10 K), it is
necessary that the mass flow rate of the cooling plate is no less than
0.0223 kg=s. Increasing the mass flow rate is an effective way to
cool batteries in a short time.
This paper only simulated the heating of one of the batteries,
using the average heat flux, and did not change the battery heating
with time under different working conditions. Future work will start
from these two aspects and be more closely related to the real
situation of EVs.
Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code generated or used during the
study are available in a repository online in accordance with funder
data retention policies.
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support from the
Jilin Province Technology Breakthrough Project (Project No.
20190101121gg) for the work reported in this paper.
Notation
The following symbols are used in this paper:
AD = projected area perpendicular to the direction of
flow (m2 );
Af = superficial area of the vortex generator (m2 );
AN = area corresponding to the different grids (m2 );
CD = total resistance coefficient = 1;
Cp = specific heat capacity J/(kg·°C)
Cz = pressure resistance coefficient = 1;
D = hydraulic diameter of the channel (m);
FD = total resistance (N);
Ff = frictional resistance (N);
Fp = pressure resistance (N);
L = length of channel (m);
N = number of surface grids = 1;
P = pressure (Pa);
t = time (s);
T ave = average temperature of the section (K);
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T max = maximum temperature of the cooling plate (K);
T N = surface temperature of a single grid (K);
T σ = standard deviation of the temperature distribution (K);
u~ = velocity vector of the coolant (m=s);
u0 = velocity of fluid (m=s);
x = x-axis direction;
y = y-axis direction;
z = z-axis direction;
ΔP = pressure drop (Pa);
λ = dimensionless friction factor = 1;
μ = dynamic viscosity (Pa · s); and
ρ = density (kg=m3 ).
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