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A full morphology ͑FM͒ model has been developed for studying the two-phase characteristics of the gas diffusion medium in a polymer electrolyte fuel cell ͑PEFC͒. The three-dimensional ͑3D͒ fibrous microstructure for the nonwoven gas diffusion layer ͑GDL͒ microstructure has been reconstructed using a stochastic technique for Toray090 and SGL10BA carbon papers. The FM model directly solves for the capillary pressure-saturation relations on the detailed morphology of the reconstructed GDL from drainage simulations. The estimated capillary pressure-saturation curves can be used as valuable inputs to macroscopic two-phase models. Additionally, 3D visualization of the water distribution in the gas diffusion medium suggests that only a small number of pores are occupied by liquid water at breakthrough. Based on a reduced compression model, the two-phase behavior of the GDL under mechanical load is also investigated and the capillary pressure-saturation relations are evaluated for different compression levels.The polymer electrolyte fuel cells ͑PEFCs͒, which convert the chemical energy of hydrogen directly into electrical energy, are considered as the most promising alternative energy-conversion devices in the 21st century for several applications including automotive, stationary and portable power. The electrochemical reaction occurring in the cathode catalyst layer ͑CL͒, referred to as the oxygen reduction reaction combines protons, resulting from hydrogen oxidation in the anode catalyst layer, with oxygen to produce water and waste heat. Although tremendous progress has been made in recent years in enhancing overall performance of the PEFC, one major performance-limiting step is the coverage of the reaction sites in the CLs as well as the blockage of the reactant-transporting networks in the porous gas diffusion layers ͑GDLs͒ due to liquid water, which hinders the oxidant from reaching the active reaction sites in the CLs at high current density operation. The GDL plays a crucial role in the overall water management which requires a delicate balance between reactant transport from the gas channels and water removal from the electrochemically active sites. Mathias et al. 1 provided a comprehensive overview of GDL structure and functions.Several studies have been attempted in recent years to model two-phase behavior and flooding phenomena in polymer electrolyte fuel cells in various degrees of complexities. 2-15 Recent reviews by Wang 16 and Weber and Newman 17 provide comprehensive overview of various two-phase PEFC models and address the water management issue with particular attention to GDL in significant details. However, all of the above-mentioned macroscopic two-phase models are plagued with the scarcity of realistic two-phase correlations, in terms of capillary pressure and relative permeability as functions of water saturation, tailored specifically for actual gas diffusion medium characterized by woven or nonwoven fibrous structures. Due to the lack of reliable two phase correlations, these models often deploy...

Many boundary value problems (BVPs) or initial BVPs have nonsmooth solutions, with jumps along lower-dimensional interfaces. The explicit-jump immersed interface method (EJIIM) was developed following Li's fast iterative immersed interface method (FIIIM), recognizing that the foundation for the efficient solution of many such problems is a good solver for elliptic BVPs. EJIIM generalizes the class of problems for which FIIIM is applicable. It handles interfaces between constant and variable coefficients and extends the immersed interface method (IIM) to BVPs on irregular domains with Neumann and Dirichlet boundary conditions. Proofs of second order convergence for a one-dimensional (1D) problem with piecewise constant coefficients and for two-dimensional (2D) problems with singular sources are given. Other problems are reduced to the singular sources case, with additional equations determining the source strengths. The advantages of EJIIM are high quality of solutions even on coarse grids and easy adaptation to many problems with complicated geometries, while still maintaining the efficiency of the FIIIM.