An effective equivalent stiffness model combined with equivalent beam model to predict the contact pressure distribution for a large PEM fuel cell stack

Abstract

The contact pressure distribution plays a key role to the proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell performance. The purpose of this study is to propose an equivalent stiffness model combined with an equivalent beam model to predict the contact pressure distribution for a large fuel cell stack. With the established equivalent stiffness model, the equivalent values of contact pressure is revealed. Moreover, these equivalent values are extended by an iterative calculation for contact pressure distribution with an established equivalent beam model. Finally, the presented model is compared to a three-dimensional FEA model. This equivalent stiffness model has high accuracy only with a 4.1% tolerance and the correlation coefficient of FEA and equivalent beam model for the contact pressure distribution at transverse and longitudinal direction is 0.976 and 0.998. This presented equivalent model is effective and can provide a direction for future work on high-performance fuel cell stack design and optimization.