Meshing strategy for PEM fuel cells CFD modelling – a systematic approach

Abstract

Typical PEM fuel cell models usually involve more than one million mesh elements making the computation very intense. This necessitates an effective way to mesh the computational domain with a minimum number of mesh points while, at the same time, maintaining good accuracy. The meshing strategy in each flow direction is investigated systematically in the current study and it has been found that mesh resolution in different directions has a different degree of influence on the accuracy of solutions. The proposed meshing strategy is capable of greatly reducing the number of mesh elements, hence computation time, while preserving the characteristics of important flow-field variables