Dataset for Comparison of Immersion and Side Cooling Systems of Cylindrical Li-Ion Cells

The safety and durability of Li-ion batteries strongly depend on effective thermal management, especially under high C-rate operation. This work presents a comparative numerical investigation of immersion and side cooling applied to cylindrical 18650 cells. A transient three-dimensional model was developed for a series-connected pack of nine cells subjected to a 3.8 C discharge rate. The two cooling strategies were systematically assessed with respect to coolant flow rate, focusing on maximal temperature and temperature spread across the pack.The results show that both immersion and side cooling achieve nearly identical thermal performance in terms of maximal temperature and temperature spread. However, side cooling exhibits a higher pressure drop, whereas immersion cooling places stricter demands on sealing quality and the dielectric properties of the coolant. Overall, the study demonstrates that each method has specific trade-offs, and the optimal choice depends on the balance between thermal performance, hydraulic losses, and design complexity.This dataset includes data from the numerical computations of polymeric side- and immersion-cooling systems (maximal temperature, temperature spread, and pressure drop for various flow rates at a discharge current of 10 A). The necessary user-defined-function (UDF) code written in C and implemented in ANSYS Fluent for the heat-generation source term is provided in the dataset. The material database and computational domains are also included.