A pre-study of sustainable battery packs for electric vehicles to achieve lightweight and effective heat transfer

Research Project, 2025

The electrification of the transportation industry has emerged as a solution to address environmental concerns, particularly the reduction of CO2 emissions and gas pollution associated with traditionally fossil fuel powered vehicles and vessels. Trends from the automotive industry have shown that an ever-increasing demand of battery packs with high performance for the electric vehicle by reducing weight, improving space utilization and adding additional functions. 

To design efficient electric power systems for vehicles, ships or aircraft, a problem to be addressed is that existing battery packs are very heavy and take up a lot of space. This is due to lack of vertical integration and sub-optimal electrical and mechanical design architecture. The redundant materials and components are expensive and can be removed to save weight and space. Therefore, there is large potential to improve available power systems in general by developing a new generation battery pack for future mobility. Moreover, thermal management and should also be thoroughly investigated because of overheating and cooling problems. 

This project was conducted to investigate three multifunctional materials to address their applicability for battery packs, collect state-of-the-art structure designs of a battery pack concepts through literature survey, and finally overview thermal-management methods for battery packs and analyze heat transfer for a simplified battery pack model by means of high-fidelity numerical simulations.