Study of an equivalent mechanical model and experimental validation to predict the impact slippage of a full-dimensional PEMFC stack for commercial trucks

As hydrogen and Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells are well applied in commercial heavy trucks for sustainable energy conversation to decrease diesel requirement, however the number of cells in a large full-dimensional fuel cell stack can reach between 600 and 700 cells. Due to the inevitable difficulties of modeling of a large full-dimensional fuel cell stack, the purpose of this study is to propose an effective equivalent modeling to predict the contact pressure and the normal force. Representative volume element (RVE) homogenization method is implemented to simplify the mesh and to avoid the convergence difficulties. To validate this equivalent model, experiments with pressure-sensitive film to measure the contact pressure distribution are carried out. The equivalent model has a great agreement with the experimental results and the maximum error is within 8 %. Finally, based on this equivalent model, the impact dynamic behaviors of a large full-dimensional fuel cell stack with 100 cells are established and the results of the maximum relative slippage and maximum absolute slippage of the whole fuel cell stack are presented. This study offers an effective and efficient modeling and simulation method to study the large full-dimensional fuel cell stack and even impact slippage applied on the commercial truck.