During the assembly of a fuel cell, the mechanical stress and strain that occur have a significantly largeeffect on the performance and reliability of fuel cell. When assembling a fuel cell stack, the assemblypressure generated can decrease the interfacial contact resistance (ICR) between the bipolar plate(BPP), gas diffusion layer (GDL) and catalyst layer, and also, the reduction in mass transfer thathappens during the electrochemical reaction in the catalyst layer through the GDL must be considered.Recent research on the numerical analysis of fuel cells does not take into account the aforementionedimportance of the GDL compression deformation, claiming the restrictions of numerical analysis, anduses a simple model to analyze the mass transfer of the fuel cells using CFD analysis. Therefore in thisresearch, the performance of the fuel cell (e.g. pressure drop, gas permeability of GDL, and theelectrolyte membrane water content () were compared for the FSI model, which is a thermalfluidbased PEMFC model (CFD model) that takes the GDL compression deformation into account. TheGDL compression deformation, dependent on the fuel cell assembly pressure, affects the gaspermeability caused by under-rib convection. As a result in the inlet of the fuel cell, the internalpressure and flow velocity increase due to the decrease in cross sectional area, but due to the decreasedgas permeability of the rib it has a low current density, and as the outlet is approached, it can bedetermined that the current density actually increases due to the hydrogen and oxygen mass fractionsbeing greater than the CFD model making the current density more uniform overall. Therefore usingthe FSI analysis method, it is important to predict the optimized fuel cell architecture and operatingcondition parameters.
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