Effects of Curing Temperature and Pressure on the Mechanical Properties of Gasket Material Used for Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells

Abstract

The long-term mechanical stability of the gasket material is critical to sealing and electrochemical performance of the polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells. In this paper, the silicone rubber material, which is being considered as gasket material for PEM fuel cells, was fabricated at different curing temperatures and different curing pressures. Effects of the curing temperatures and curing pressures on the mechanical properties of the silicone rubber material were investigated. The tensile test results show that tensile strength of the specimen cured at the curing temperature of 160 was larger than that for the specimens cured at the curing temperature of 150 or 170 under the same curing pressure. The test results of the compression stress-strain, compression set and compression stress relaxation show that the curing temperature and curing pressure affected significantly the compression elastic modulus, compression set rate and compression stress relaxation behavior. It is found that the silicone rubber material cured at the curing temperature of 160 under the curing pressure of 10MPa had good compression mechanical properties compared to the materials cured at the other curing temperatures and curing pressure in this work.