Open Access

ARTICLE

Analysis of Geometrical Arrangement and Packing Material on Heat Generation in Lithium-Ion Battery Banks

Seenaa Khudhayer Salman¹, Shaymaa Husham Abdulmalek^2,*, Ali Ahmed Gitan¹, Thamer Khalif Salem³, Raaid Rashad Jassem Al-Doury³
1 Sustainable Energy Engineering Department, Tikrit University, Tikrit, 34001, Iraq
2 Electromechanical Engineering Department, University of Samarra, Samarra, 34010, Iraq
3 Mechanical Engineering Department, Tikrit University, Tikrit, 34001, Iraq
* Corresponding Author: Shaymaa Husham Abdulmalek. Email:
(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Advancements in Energy Resources and Their Processes, Systems, Materials and Policies for Affordable Energy Sustainability)

Energy Engineering https://doi.org/10.32604/ee.2025.073940

Received 29 September 2025; Accepted 18 December 2025; Published online 08 January 2026

Abstract

Operating Lithium-ion batteries at their temperature limits is a challenging design task due to explosion risk at high temperatures and rapid degradation at low temperatures. Depending on the battery package design, those risks can be solved with passive solutions, which require no active cooling or heating. The current work aims to optimize the pack design and materials of the type-NCR18650B battery based on a wide range of operation temperature. The lower limit was denoted by cold case while the maximum limit was expressed by hot case. A combined analytical-numerical approach was developed to model the heat generation inside the battery. A thermal resistance analysis was used to determine the boundary conditions of the numerical model. The governing differential equations for the 1-D heat generation model were solved analytically. The numerical analysis was considered to determine the best battery pack design based on material parameters, number of batteries, and geometrical arrangement. The analytical results revealed that the cold case can be selected as the worst case and the best model was obtained using the hexagonal-shaped 10-battery pack that was covered with Delrin of 1.8 mm in thickness. The numerical results showed that the best model was the hexagonal-shaped 10-battery pack with Delrin of 2 mm in thickness that achieved the largest temperature of −20.6°C in the cold case.

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Keywords

Analytical analysis; battery package; battery package configuration; battery packing safety; lithium-ion battery; thermal performance

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