Suitable flow field designs significantly affect the performance of high temperature proton exchange membrane (HT-PEM) fuel cells. Previous designs both in terms of shape and size optimisation are still inadequate in the category of experiential design method, depend on the experience of designers and lack of explainable theories, leading to uncertainties in the design process. To address this issue, a novel flow field design method for innovative flow fields using combined topology and surrogate models is proposed, in which a topology model is built to optimise to obtain the basic shape of flow field, then a numerical model is established to train a surrogate model for the optimum design. Finally, a radial basis function (RBF) model is built to determine the optimum channel parameters. With this method, a 25 cm2 leaf-like flow field with a diagonal inlet outlet is designed and investigated which outperforms the initial serpentine design with a 7.95% increase in current density, a 8.47% increase in actual power, and a 97.8% reduction in pressure drop at 0.50 V. This novel flow field design method combines the advantages of the topology and surrogate models in shape and size optimisation, respectively. It significantly reduces the design threshold and can be widely used in innovative flow field design in energy and other engineering fields.(c) 2023 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The stoichiometric ratio and flow channel geometry play a vital role in the performance of high temperature proton exchange membrane (HT-PEM) fuel cells. Because of the high cost of experiments or simulations, most analyses and optimization of the stoichiometric ratio and flow channel geometry are limited to several points in the entire design domain. In this study, an analysis and optimization method for HT-PEM fuel cells based on the surrogate model was proposed. Surrogate models were constructed using some of the available budgets of samples to analyze and optimize the entire design domain. With this method, it was indicated that the effect of the cathode stoichiometric ratio is more significant to the cell performance than the anode stoichiometric ratio and there are significant nonlinear interactions among the flow channel geometry parameters. At the fixed operating voltage, the flow channel geometry with the maximum current density and that with the maximum real power were obtained. Compared with the base design, the designs obtained by the surrogate model improve the current density and real power by 10.54% and 3.93%, respectively. Thus, this analysis and optimization method is demonstrated to be helpful and deserves attention in future research.

质子交换膜燃料电池是一种可以将储存在燃料中的化学能转化为电能的装置.应用Kriging代理模型结合遗传算法对流道宽、流道高和岸宽3个几何参数进行了优化设计,以质子交换膜燃料电池的净功率作为优化的目标函数来评价质子交换膜燃料电池的性能.数值模拟应用了商业软件ANSYS FLUENT.优化后的质子交换膜燃料电池流道内具有更高的压力,使更多的反应气体参加电化学反应,因此优化后的质子交换膜燃料电池的性能得到了提高.

以实现高温质子交换膜燃料电池单电池内部接触压力的均匀性与电堆内单电池之间接触压力的一致性为目的,建立了一种具有非线性接触边界条件的高温质子交换膜燃料电池电堆端板的拓扑优化模型.通过研究在一定工作温度下装配荷载对电堆内部接触压力的影响,并综合考虑端板的质量与制造难度,构建了一种适用于燃料电池电堆的简化模型.从基于热力耦合的有限元法出发,对燃料电池端板进行以最小质量为目标、最大应力为约束的拓扑优化,并在综合考虑结构形状与拓扑结果的基础上建立端板的几何模型.结果表明,拓扑优化得到的端板结构使电堆内部具有更均匀的接触压力,因此拓扑优化可以为端板的结构设计提供理论参考.