Experimental and numerical investigation of Fe₃O₄-nanofluid cooling in copper-foam-embedded mini-channel jackets with geometry-dependent fins for prismatic battery packs

This study presents a comparative thermal assessment of Fe₃O₄ nanofluid-cooled copper-foam mini-channel heat sink configurations for prismatic lithium-ion battery packs. An experimental investigation combined with a three-dimensional Eulerian two-phase computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model was developed to evaluate the thermal performance of six cooling configurations, including a conventional liquid cooling jacket (Model I), copper-foam embedded design (Model II), optimized cooling pattern (Model III), and fin-enhanced copper foam structures with straight, wavy, and curved fins (Models IV–VI). The results demonstrate that integrating copper foam significantly enhances heat dissipation and temperature uniformity by increasing thermal conductivity and the solid–fluid interfacial area. At low discharge rates (1 C), the thermal improvement is moderate, wit peak temperature reductions of approximately 1–3% compared to the baseline. However, at 3 C, Model V exhibited the best thermal performance among the fin-enhanced configurations, achieving the lowest maximum temperature of 39.83 °C and the smallest temperature difference of 9.39 °C. At a low discharge rate of 1 C, the thermal improvement was moderate, with peak-temperature reductions of approximately 1–3% relative to Model I. The findings highlight that coupled structural modifications, including porous media integration and fin geometry optimization, play a critical role in improving thermal performance, particularly under high heat load conditions. These results provide design guidelines for advanced liquid-cooled battery thermal management systems for high-power, fast-charging applications .