Liquid water flooding in a proton exchange membrane fuel cell cathode with an interdigitated design

In this paper, we studied the liquid water flooding process in the flow field of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell with an interdigitated design by using a multi-phase three-dimensional fuel cell cathode side model with a porous layer. The commercial CFD software package FLUENT (ANSYS Canonsburg, PA, USA) was used with a user-defined function. The results indicate that the general liquid water flooding process inside of this type of cathode design can be classified into three phases (the porous layer phase, the channel phase, and the drainage phase), and the details of liquid water behavior during this flooding process can be well understood and explained using the air-liquid interaction. Also, a liquid water avalanche phenomenon was discovered in this type of cathode design. Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.