Simulation and Analysis of Thermal Stress and Sintering Warpage of Planar Solid Oxide Fuel Cells

Abstract

Solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is one of the new energy conversion technologies producing electricity and heat from fuel and oxidant through an electrochemical reaction. The high operating temperature has many advantages including high efficiency, flexible fuel adaptability and low emissions. However, it has also some drawbacks, e.g., thermal expansion mismatches among the involved materials, particularly when the temperature reaches around 1400 oC during the sintering process, which may cause non-uniform distribution of thermal stress and even further deformation and warpage observed in the cell manufacturing steps. A three-dimensional CFD (computational fluid dynamics) simulation model is developed to study the thermal stress distributed in the sintered function layers of the anode-supported planar SOFC unit cells (10×10 cm2) using a finite element method. Five layers are included, i.e., cathode and its separation layer (GDC/LSCF, 70 µm), anode support and active layers (Ni/YSZ, 550µm), and electrolyte layer (YSZ, 30 µm) between them. In terms of the thermal stress and deformation, the predicted results are presented and discussed for the sintered unit cells with different angels located around the four cornels. It is found that the maximum thermal stress occurs at the interface between the electrode and electrolyte; the magnitude and distribution of thermal stress at the interfaces are closely related to the material thermal properties; the maximum deformation about 13 mm in the thickness direction is predicted for the 90-angel shaped cornels at the sintering temperature 1400 oC, which is bigger than that for the case with the circular shaped cornels; the deformation magnitude depends not only on the maximum thermal stress, but also the difference between the maximum and minimum thermal stress. The findings and predicted results may be applied for optimization of design and sintering conditions for SOFC unit cells. Acknowledgements This work is supported by the National Key Research and Development Project of China (2018YFB1502204, 2018YFB1502203, 2018YFB1502205), the Ningbo major special projects of the Plan “Science and Technology Innovation 2025” (2018B10048). Figure 1