2018/08/09 by Roman Vetter, Jürgen O. Schumacher, Jürgen Schumacher · 183 citations
Energy · Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advancements in Solid Oxide Fuel Cells #Automotive industry #Benchmarking #Computational science #Computer science #Electrocatalysts for Energy Conversion #Engineering #Fuel Cells and Related Materials #Fuel cells #MATLAB #Mechanical engineering #Modeling and simulation #Operating system #Programming language #Proton exchange membrane fuel cell #Simulation #Solver #physics.comp-ph
paper · pdf · open access · doi:10.1016/j.cpc.2018.07.023
published in Computer Physics Communications 234, 223-234 (Elsevier BV) · 13 pages, 7 figures, 7 tables
openalex publication_date 2018/08/09 · arxiv created 2018/11/24 · arxiv updated 2018/11/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
In almost 30 years of PEM fuel cell modeling, countless numerical models have been developed in science and industrial applications, almost none of which have been fully disclosed to the public. There is a large need for standardization and establishing a common ground not only in experimental characterization of fuel cells, but also in the development of simulation codes, to prevent each research group from having to start anew from scratch. Here, we publish the first open standalone implementation of a full-blown, steady-state, non-isothermal two-phase model for low-temperature PEM fuel cells. It is based on macro-homogeneous modeling approaches and implements the most essential through-plane transport processes in a five-layer MEA. The focus is on code simplicity and compactness with only a few hundred lines of clearly readable code, providing a starting point for more complex model development. The model is implemented as a standalone MATLAB function, based on MATLAB's standard boundary value problem solver. The default simulation setup reflects wide-spread commercially available MEA materials. Operating conditions recommended for automotive applications by the European Commission are used to establish new fuel cell simulation base data, making our program a valuable candidate for model comparison, validation and benchmarking.