Nowadays, lithium-ion battery (LIB) technology provides one of the most important approaches for large-scale electricity storage. In this work, an electrical-thermal-fluidic coupled model is proposed for practical LIB-based energy storage systems (ESSs). The coupled model is established based on the equivalent circuit model (ECM) which describes electrical behavior of LIBs, the airflow turbulent model, and the “single domain of multiple sub-regions” thermal model. Currents and voltages of LIB cells, airflow velocity field and pressure field, and temperature distribution in the whole ESS, can be simulated by the developed full-scale model. Simulation results of a practical commercial LIB ESS (1 MW/2 MWh) in typical frequency regulation operation, including electrical-thermal characteristics represented by currents and heat generation rates of LIBs in the ESS, flow characteristics represented by airflow field and mass flow rate distribution, ambient temperature sensitivity analysis represented by temperature distributions of the ESS initially under 27℃ and 38℃ ambient respectively, are displayed and discussed, exhibiting the capability of the proposed model. The proposed model has been validated by comparing the simulated results with the actual measured data; the reasonably good agreement demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed model. Therefore, the established model has the potential to provide a feasible and powerful approach or tool to perform multi-physics simulations of practical large-scale LIB ESSs for different functions, including but not limited to detailed temperature evaluations, cooling structure optimization, materials selection, and thermal-safety status evaluating and monitoring.

如今，锂离子电池（LIB）技术为大规模电力存储提供了最重要的方法之一。在这项工作中，为基于LIB的实际储能系统（ESS）提出了电-热-流体耦合模型。基于等效电路模型（ECM）建立耦合模型，等效电路模型描述了LIB的电性能，气流湍流模型和“多个子区域的单个域”热模型。LIB电池的电流和电压，气流速度场和压力场以及整个ESS中的温度分布都可以通过建立的满量程模型进行仿真。实际商用LIB ESS（1 MW / 2 MWh）在典型调频操作中的仿真结果，包括由ESS中的LIB的电流和发热率表示的电热特性，由气流场和质量流率分布表示的流动特性，分别由最初在27℃和38℃环境下的ESS的温度分布表示的环境温度敏感性分析进行了展示和讨论，展示了所提出模型的功能。通过将仿真结果与实际测量数据进行比较，对所提出的模型进行了验证。合理的良好协议证明了该模型的有效性。因此，已建立的模型有可能提供一种可行且强大的方法或工具，以针对各种功能对实际的大型LIB ESS进行多物理场仿真，