Thermomechanical analysis of porous solid oxide fuel cell by using peridynamics

Abstract

Solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is widely used in hybrid marine propulsion systems due to its high power output, excellent emission control and wide fuel suitability. However, the operating temperature in SOFC will rise up to 800–1000 ℃ due to redox reaction among hydrogen and oxygen ions. This provides a suitable environment for ions transporting through ceramic materials. Under such operation temperatures, degradation may occur in the electrodes and electrolyte. As a result, unstable voltage, low capacity and cell failure may eventually occur. This study presents thermomechanical analysis of a porous SOFC cell plate which contains electrodes, electrolytes and pores. A microscale specimen in the shape of a plate is considered in order to maintain uniform temperature loading and increase the accuracy of estimation. A new computational technique, peridynamics, is utilized to calculate the deformations and stresses of the cell plate. Moreover, the crack formation and propagation are also obtained by using peridynamics. According to the numerical results, damage evolution depends on the electrolyte/electrode interface strength during the charging process. For weak interface strength case, damage emerges at the electrode/electrolyte interface. On the other hand, for stronger interface cases, damage emerges on pore boundaries especially with sharp corner

A state-based peridynamic formulation for functionally graded Kirchhoff plates

“…where r and t represent density and time, respectively, u and € u denote displacement and b is the body load vector. In equation (13), f represents the interaction (bond) force vector between material points located at x and x 0 . The closed-form solution to equation ( 13) is generally not available.…”

“…Moreover, PD is a non-local continuum mechanics formulation and it has a length-scale parameter, horizon, which defines range of non-local interactions between material points. PD has been used for analysing different types of materials including metals and composites [7–10] and is suitable for multiphysics analysis [11–15]. Moreover, several peridynamic formulations are available in the literature to analyse beams, plates and shells [16–21].…”

Ordinary state-based peridynamic modelling for fully coupled thermoelastic problems

“…(11) and 12, the non-dimensional form of the fully coupled equations can be achieved by utilizing the non-dimensional parameters given in Eqs. (22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30) as 1D analysiṡ…”

“…Therefore, PD theory is especially suitable for problems with discontinues; thus, it is adopted in this paper. The crack nucleation and propagation have been investigated by many researchers in the realm of PD theory [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38], but most of them are only in mechanical field. In thermal field, Oterkus et al [39] derived the formulation of thermal diffusion with PD theory and utilized it to capture the fuel pellet cracking [40].…”

Microstructural Investigation of Plasma Sprayed Ceramic Coatings Using Peridynamics

“…Especially on the microstructure scale several discontinuities exist, that can be represented by peridynamics. De Meo et al (2016) and Wang et al (2017) show the potential of this method by investigating the damage due to corrosion in polycrystalline materials and the thermomechanical behaviour of electrode material, which is typically deployed in solid oxide fuel cells, respectively [7,8].…”