Analysis System of Transient Electrochemo-mechanical Simulation of Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Implemented in Commercial FEM Software

Abstract

To enable the prediction of the mechanical degradation of solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) during operation, we have developed an analysis system for the electrochemical and mechanical coupling phenomena by incorporating general-purpose finite element analysis (FEA) software along with its pre- and post-processing functions and conducted validation analyses to examine its quantitative performance in reproducing the measurement data. The dependencies of material properties on both temperature and oxygen’s chemical potentials are empirically obtained and stored in separate spreadsheets and read into the system so that the actual operation environment can be realized. The thermal and reduction strains calculated in the transient analysis for the potentials are also stored in spreadsheets beforehand and used in the stress analyses to make quantitative evaluation of creep deformations. Through a numerical example, the mathematical model implemented into the developed system has been initially validated in a quantitative way.