Abstract
A proper stacking force and assembly are important to the performance of fuel cell. Improper assembly pressure may lead to leakage of fuels and high interfacial contact resistance, excessive assembly pressure may result in damage to the gas diffusion layer and other components. The pressure distribution of gas diffusion layer is important to make interfacial contact resistance less for stack performance. To analyze the influence of design parameter factors for pressure distribution, and to optimize stack design, DOE (Design of Experiment) was used for polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell stack pressure test. As commonly known, the higher clamping force improves the fuel cell stack performance. However, non-uniformity of stress distribution is also increased. It shows that optimization between clamping force and stress distribution is needed for well designed structure of fuel cell stack. In this study, stack design optimization method is suggested by using FEM (Finite Element Methode) and DOE for light-weighted fuel cell stack.
