TABLE OF CONTENTS Modeling plays a significant and important role in fuel cell design and development process. Because of its importance, modeling is initiated early into a fuel cell development cycle, as shown in Figure 7-1 [ [1]]. The flow-chart illustrates a typical procedure in fuel cell development, where the process begins with a set of requirements. Requirements include power and energy requirements, environmental operating conditions, size and volume limitations, safety specifications, and others. Along with the requirements, knowledge of materials, processes, and material interactions is necessary to properly construct a fuel cell stack. Once several designs are down-selected, modeling of the designs is performed to determine how well the candidate systems satisfy requirements. The modeling helps the designer further down-select designs to fabricate and test. The tests performed on the final designs can either result in a final prototype or result in an iteration of existing designs for improvement. Reliable diagnostics are needed not only to find out what is wrong with the existing design so that it can be improved, but also to calibrate and verify the models and assumptions used in developing them.
This design iteration loop can be quite lengthy and frequent, especially when stringent requirements or poor modeling capabilities exist. On the contrary, improvements in modeling capability can help the designer find and improve on existing designs that satisfy stringent requirements. Hence, modeling has a critical role in the fuel cell design and...
