A typical operating temperature of a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is quite high above 750 °C and affects the thermomechanical behavior of the cell. Thermal stresses may cause microstructural instability and sub-critical cracking. Therefore, a joint analysis by the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and computational structural mechanics based on the finite element method (FEM) was carried out to analyze thermal stresses in a planar SOFC and to predict potential failure locations in the cell. A full numerical model was based on the coupling of thermo-fluid model with the thermo-mechanical model. Based on a temperature distribution from the thermo-fluid model, stress distribution including the von Mises stress, shear stress as well as the operating principal stress were derived in the thermo-mechanical model. The FEM calculations were performed under different working conditions of the planar SOFC. The highest total stress was noticed at the lower operating voltage of 0.3 V, while the lowest total stress was determined at the voltage of 0.7 V. The obtained stress distributions allowed a better understanding of details of internal processes occurring within the SOFC and provided helpful guidance in the optimization of a new SOFC design.
The aim of the work was to develop a mathematical model for computing the steady-state voltage -current characteristics of a planar Solid Oxide Fuel Cell and to determine the performance of a new SOFC design. The design involves cross-fl ow bipolar plates. Each of the bipolar plates has an air channel system on one side and a fuel channel system on the other side. The proposed model was developed using the ANSYS-Fluent commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software supported by additional Fuel Cell module. The results confi rm that the model can well simulate the diagonal current path. The effects of temperature and gas fl ow through the channels and a Membrane Electrode Assembly (MEA) structure were taken into account. It was shown that a signifi cant increase of the MEA temperature at high current density can lead to hot spots formation and hence electrode damage.
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