Topology Optimization for Battery Pack Design using Phase-Change Material

Discipline: Thermal Control & Protection

Abstract:
Phase-change materials (PCMs) can improve aerospace thermal management by storing heat as latent heat, smoothing temperature spikes in electric aircraft batteries and space-craft subsystems during demanding transients. Their main drawback, low thermal conduc-tivity, motivates hybrid designs that combine PCMs with high-conductivity pathways and/or embedded cooling channels to spread and transfer heat faster. In this talk, a level-set to-pology optimization framework that automatically designs these hybrid heat sinks and bat-tery-pack thermal architectures is presented.

The thermal response is modeled with an un-steady diffusion/convection-diffusion formulation including phase change via the apparent heat capacity method. The multiphysics system is solved with FEniCS, sensitivities are computed using a discrete adjoint method, and the level-set topology optimization runs in ParaLeSTO. For aircraft cases, battery heat generation is driven by the Doyle-Fuller-Newman model implemented using PyBaMM.

About the Speaker:
Alex Guibert is a recent Ph.D. graduate from UC San Diego specializing in numerical model-ing, multiphysics simulation, and topology optimization. His work focuses on building high-fidelity and reduced-order models to guide design decisions under coupled thermal, mechanical, electrochemical, and fluid flow effects, with applications including electric-aircraft battery packs. He previously worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where he performed thermo-mechanical finite element analyses of spacecraft structures and supported design optimization studies. He has also delivered simulation and optimiza-tion tools for partners, including NASA, Boeing, LG Energy Solution, Collins Aerospace, and Honda Racing. Alex holds master’s degrees in Structural Engineering, Mechanical & Mate-rials Engineering, and Physics.