Speaker: 

Professor Pengtao Sun

Institution: 

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Time: 

Monday, September 20, 2010 - 4:00pm

Location: 

RH 306

This talk is dedicated to the studies of a three-dimensional, nonisothermal, anisotropic, two-phase transport model of proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) and its efficient numerical method. Besides addressing the conservation equations of mass, momentum, species, charge and energy in view of the nonisothermality, anisotropy and multiphase flow in PEMFC model, from an efficient numerical method's point of view, we present some new formulations for species equations in the interests of the interactions among the species. In a framework of finite element-upwind finite volume method, some efficient numerical methods are designed and investigated in order to achieve fast and convergent numerical simulation for this PEMFC model.

Numerical implementation is done by using a novel automated finite element/finite volume program generator (FEPG). By virtue of a high-level algorithm description language (script), component programming and human intelligence technologies, FEPG can quickly generate finite element/finite volume source code for PEMFC simulation. Thus, one can focus on the efficient algorithm research without being distracted by the tedious computer programming on finite element/finite volume methods. The 3D numerical simulations demonstrate that a convergent and reasonable physical solution can be attained within 100 steps or so, comparing to the oscillating and nonconvergent nonlinear iterations conducted by the standard finite element/finite volume method. Numerical success demonstrates that FEPG is an efficient tool for both algorithm research and software development of a 3D multiphysics PEMFC model.