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On the application of the PFEM to droplet dynamics modeling in fuel cells

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Abstract

The Particle Finite Element Method (PFEM) is used to develop a model to study two-phase flow in fuel cell gas channels. First, the PFEM is used to develop the model of free and sessile droplets. The droplet model is then coupled to an Eulerian, fixed-grid, model for the airflow. The resulting coupled PFEM-Eulerian algorithm is used to study droplet oscillations in an air flow and droplet growth in a low-temperature fuel cell gas channel. Numerical results show good agreement with predicted frequencies of oscillation, contact angle, and deformation of injected droplets in gas channels. The PFEM-based approach provides a novel strategy to study droplet dynamics in fuel cells.

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Notes

  1. Once again, linear pressure-velocity interpolations have been used for the space discretization while Backward Euler has been applied for the time integration.

  2. For the examples solved in this work, the velocity of the droplet was not having considerable impact upon the airflow. Thus zero velocity can be used at \(\varGamma _\mathrm{I}\).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre Internacional de Métodes Numérics en Enginyeria (CIMNE), Gran Capitán s/n, 08034, Barcelona, Spain

    Pavel B. Ryzhakov

  2. CIMNE, Barcelona, Spain

    Pavel B. Ryzhakov, Alex Jarauta & Jordi Pons-Prats

  3. Energy Systems Design Lab (ESDLab), University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

    Marc Secanell

Authors
  1. Pavel B. Ryzhakov
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  2. Alex Jarauta
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  3. Marc Secanell
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  4. Jordi Pons-Prats
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pavel B. Ryzhakov.

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Funding

This work was supported under the auspices of the FPDI-2013-18471 and BES-2011-047702 grants of the Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad as well as partially funded by the COMETAD project of the National RTD Plan (ref. MAT2014-60435-C2-1-R) of the mentioned ministry.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Ryzhakov, P.B., Jarauta, A., Secanell, M. et al. On the application of the PFEM to droplet dynamics modeling in fuel cells. Comp. Part. Mech. 4, 285–295 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40571-016-0112-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40571-016-0112-9

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