THERMAL SCIENCE

International Scientific Journal

Xiaotong Ding

,

Yu Wang

,

Wenhui Tang

OPTIMIZED DESIGN OF MICRO-CHANNEL COLD PLATES FOR UNMANNED VESSEL ENERGY STORAGE BATTERIES BASED ON ORTHOGONAL EXPERIMENTS

ABSTRACT
This study addresses the thermal management challenges of energy storage batteries in amphibious unmanned surface vehicles under high power conditions through an innovative cross-flow micro-channel cold plate. The design incorporates dual inlets and outlets that create two independent, staggered fluid channels. Combined with a manifold-inspired distribution structure, this configuration significantly improves flow uniformity and cooling performance. An orthogonal experimental design was employed to examine the effects of coolant type, inlet temperature, and flow velocity on the thermal-hydraulic performance. The CFD simulations verified that the optimal parameter combination, which uses liquid water at 26°C and a flow velocity of 0.5 m/s, allows the cold plate to maintain the surface temperature of a 1200 W heat source at 27.88℃, with a pressure drop of only 3.76 kPa. This design achieves an effective balance between high heat dissipation and low pumping power consumption, demonstrating its strong potential for thermal management in high energy density battery systems.
KEYWORDS
Unmanned vessels, Battery thermal management, Cross-flow microchannel cold plates, Heat transfer optimization, Orthogonal experiments
PAPER SUBMITTED: 2025-10-30
PAPER REVISED: 2025-12-07
PAPER ACCEPTED: 2025-12-16
PUBLISHED ONLINE: 2026-01-17
DOI REFERENCE: https://doi.org/10.2298/TSCI251030243D
CITATION EXPORT: view in browser or download as text file
THERMAL SCIENCE YEAR 2026, VOLUME 30, ISSUE No. 3, PAGES [2171 - 2182]
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Optimized design of micro-channel cold plates for unmanned vessel energy storage batteries based on orthogonal experiments

© 2026 Society of Thermal Engineers of Serbia. Published by the Vinča Institute of Nuclear Sciences, National Institute of the Republic of Serbia, Belgrade, Serbia. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International licence