Dynamic Performance Simulation of the Fuel Cell Stack On-Board Vehicle

The dynamic behavior of the water and thermal management are critical to stabilize the performance of the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) during severe load changes. In this paper, a fuel cell hybrid electric vehicle (FCHEV) dynamic simulation model is established to evaluate the changes in liquid water and temperature distribution inside the fuel cell stack under a vehicle driving cycle conditions. This paper focuses on analyzing the power generation performance of the stack and the dynamic behavior of internal water and heat transfer following the demand of the vehicle. According to the simulation results, the temperature of MEA and cooling water fluctuates greatly, but the temperature of MEA is always higher than the cooling water temperature by about 1.57 degrees Celsius (average value). Compared to the experimental measurements of temperature, the simulation error for the maximum temperature is 3.4% and the simulation error for the average temperature is 4.4%. The accuracy of the simulation model is less than 5%. Based on the temperature distribution, a fuel cell system temperature control method is proposed, which is helpful to the optimization of the system and control design for the PEMFC system in FCHEV.