Improvement of the three-dimensional fine-mesh flow field of proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) using CFD modeling, artificial neural network and genetic algorithm

This study proposes a systematic methodology for improving PEMFC's performance combining computational fluid dynamic (CFD), artificial neural network (ANN), and intelligent optimization algorithms. Firstly, a three-dimensional (3-D) multiphase PEMFC CFD model with 3-D fine-mesh flow field is developed. Then the key structural features of the fine-mesh flow field are extracted as optimization decision variables, and the sampling points are selected by using the Latin hypercube sampling (LHS) experimental method. The power density and oxygen uniformity index of sampling points are calculated by CFD modeling to form the database, which is used to train the artificial neural network (ANN) surrogate model. Finally, the single-objective optimization (SOO) and multi-objective optimization (MOO) are implemented by using genetic algorithm (GA) and non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II), respectively. It was found that using trained ANN surrogate models can get a high prediction precision. The maximum power density of SOO is increased by 7.546% than that of base case and is 0.562% larger than that of MOO case. However, the overall pressure drop in cathode flow field of SOO case is greater than that of MOO case and the base case. Furthermore, the oxygen concentration, the oxygen uniformity index and the water removal capacity of MOO case are better than that of SOO case. It is recommended that the improved flow field structure optimized by MOO is more beneficial to improve the overall performance of PEMFC.