Study of thickness distribution and dimensional accuracy of stamped metallic bipolar plates

The aim of the present paper is to fabricate metallic bipolar plates (BPPs) with active area of 100cm2 modeled on an industrial gas flow field scheme. In order to produce these plates, a stamping process has been employed to reduce cost and increase production speed. 316L stainless steel sheets with the thickness of 0.1 mm have been used. The effect of forming forces on channel filling depth, channel width, rib width, the uniformity in the depth of formed channels and the thickness distribution of channels have also been studied. The stress and strain distributions of formed bipolar plate are investigated using finite element simulation. The results reveal that the stamping process does have the ability to produce a perfect bipolar plate by one-step forming die for desired dimensions. Moreover, increasing the stamping force to an optimum level has insignificant effect on the depth of the channels. However, stamping force increment results in an increase in width of the channels and ribs.