Thermal stress analysis for a typical planar anode-supported fuel cell stack

Many stack designing and optimizing works are addressed basing on the single fuel cell unit or one-cell stack by experiment or 3D calculated fluid dynamics modeling. Whether these results are also suitable for a larger stack may require further investigation. In this paper, the electrochemical-multiphysical and mechanic coupling model for a typical solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) stack is well established and verified by experiment result. Then, the performance and thermal stress distributions within the stacks with different layers are studied. The result shows that the electrochemical-multiphysics distributing characteristics within four different small-scale stacks are similar, while they are fed with similar fuel/air flow rates. The effects of the structure and parameters on the electrochemical-multiphysics performance obtained by single SOFC unit would be proved to be also suitable for the extended small-scale stacks. The stress magnitude and distributing zone over the piled SOFC units, however, are different from each other, even there are similar temperature distributions. The farther the cell unit from the bottom support the bigger of the high stress areas in those cells. The junction between the glass–ceramic and SOFC unit would suffer from high stress risk and is a potential failure location on the stack.