Liquid cooling system is of great significance for guaranteeing the performance of lithium-ion battery because of its good conductivity to keep battery working in a cool environment. In this paper, a liquid cooling system for lithium-ion battery with changing contact surface is designed. Contact surface is determined by the width of cooling plate. Mathematical derivation and numerical analysis are conducted to evaluate cooling performance and the consumption of pump power. The results show that increasing inlet mass flow can effectively limit the maximum temperature, but cannot improve temperature uniformity significantly. The temperature is proportional to the inlet temperature, but inversely proportional to the width of cooling plate. Considering the effect of temperature on thermal properties, the thermal properties will weaken the effect of width of cooling plate, inlet temperature and mass flow rate on temperature performance, specifically the maximum temperature and temperature difference, and cause temperature changes in a nonlinear manner. It is difficult to improve the overall performance of the battery by only optimizing a single factor. Three factors (mass flow rate, inlet temperature, the width of cooling plate) for the thermal performance of battery are optimized by using the single factor analysis and the orthogonal test. The best cooling performance can be obtained when inlet temperature is 18 degrees C, the width of cooling plate is 70 mm and the mass flow rate is 0.21 kg/s. With the use of the optimization method, the lower bound of temperature and the temperature uniformity of battery are achieved and the pump consumption can be reduced. The strategy adopted in this research can be widely applied to battery thermal management to reduce analysis time. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.