Electro-mechanical design of a battery pack for an electric vehicle prototype and related thermal analysis for the dimensioning of the cooling system

The thesis presented in this document describes the design of a high-voltage battery pack, intended for the propulsion of a sport utility vehicle (SUV). The study was carried out at ANKERS Juss-Amg s.r.l., an engineering consulting company based in Turin (TO, Italy) which provides C.A.E. (Computer-Aided Engineering) analysis and design services for the automotive-aerospace field. In detail, the vehicle in question is an existing prototype of a battery electric vehicle (BEV), called P1. It comes from the previous version, called P0, which had a very poor performance in terms of battery. The aim of the thesis is therefore the design of a new battery pack from scratch; furthermore, since the prototype already exists, the limit dimensions of the battery compartment are fixed and both the DC/AC converter and the electric motor are known. The work was divided into a first phase of characterization of the kinematic model of the vehicle and a second phase of design and calculation aimed at developing an optimal battery pack to meet specific customer requirements; the necessary steps for the dimensioning of the main components of the battery pack will be described. Afterwards, the proposed C.A.D. (Computer-Aided Drawing) model will be discussed, and finally the thermal analysis to determine the cooling system will be presented.