General Motors Multidisciplinary Design Program

Abstract

A major challenge in electric vehicle battery lifespan and safety is in keeping the battery at optimal temperatures. To cool the battery, a coolant is pumped through a cooling plate across the battery's surface. The cooling plate geometry determines the path the coolant will follow, which determines how well the coolant regulates the battery temperature as well as the amount of energy required to push the coolant through the plate. Traditionally, the cooling plate geometry is designed by applying topology optimization to a human-designed geometry. This limits the geometry to the creativity of human engineers and creates the bottleneck of manually developing the initial geometry. Hence, GM favors generative design, which bypasses the initial design by applying topology optimization to an empty domain.