POROUS MATERIAL MODELING AND ELECTRICAL CHARACTERISTICS PARAMETRIC ANALYSIS OF A PLANAR SOLID OXIDE FUEL CELL WITH GRADUAL POROSITY BASED ON FINITE ELEMENT METHOD

摘要

In this paper,a 3D conventional planar Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) unit porous model had been built using finite element method (FEM). Types of singleunit cell models with different porosity gradient were created for the purpose of investigating the effect of porosity of the anode on cell currentvoltage (J-V) characteristics. The porosity of anode (e) ranges between 0.2 to 0.5,and the anode was divided to most four layers with variable thicknesses.Simulation results were discussed comparing with experimental data from the literature.And the comparison shows that unit cell anode with two levels porosity gradient have the best performance. This paper finds a FEM way to study the single-unit cell electrical properties,and can be used as a tool for cell structure optimization.