The battery modeling and iterative state calculation in the battery management system is very important for the high-power lithium-ion battery packs, the accuracy of which affects its working performance and safety. An adaptive improved unscented Kalman filtering algorithm is developed to realize the iterative calculation process, aiming to overcome the rounding error in the numerical calculation treatment when it is used to estimate the nonlinear state value of the battery pack. As the sigma point is sampled in the unscented transform round from the unscented Kalman filter algorithm, an imaginary number appears that results in the working state estimation failure. In order to solve this problem, the decomposition is combined with the calculation process. Meanwhile, an adaptive noise covariance matching method is implied. Experiments show that the proposed method can guarantee the semi-positive and numerical stability of the state covariance, and the estimation accuracy can reach the third-order precision. The estimation error remains 1.60% under the drastic voltage and current change conditions, which can reduce the estimation error by 1.00% compared with the traditional method. It can provide a theoretical safety protection basis of the energy management for the lithium-ion battery pack. •An adaptive power battery modeling and iterative state calculation method is proposed.•The improved Kalman filtering algorithm is investigated in the SOC estimation.•The relaxation effect is considered to realize the accurate power availability correction.•The residual power prediction problem is solved by considering complex current influence.