Thermal performance analysis of liquid cooling system with hierarchically thermal conductive skeleton for large-scaled cylindrical battery module in harsh working conditions

•An easily-assembled liquid cooling (LC) system is developed by an embedding process.•The system avoids processing tailor-made LC components, reducing cost and complexity.•The flexibility of the silica gel greatly reduces the thermal contact resistance.•A hierarchically thermal conductive skeleton is constructed in the battery module.•The battery module presents superior cooling performance in harsh working condition.