The Investigation on the Mechanical Endurance Degradation of Nafion Membrane

DOI

10.2991/eame-15.2015.48How to use a DOI?

Keywords

PEMFC, nafion; fracture test; hygrothermal aging; mechanical endurance

Abstract

As a solution of high efficiency and clean energy, fuel cell technologies, especially proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC), have caught extensive attention. However, after decades of development, the performances of PEMFCs are far from achieving the target from the Department of Energy (DOE). So, further understanding of the degradation mechanism is needed to overcome this obstacle. Due to the importance of proton exchange membrane in a PEMFC, the degradation of the membrane, such as hygrothermal aging effect on its properties, are particularly necessary. In this work, a thick membrane (Nafion N117) which is always used as an ionic polymer for the PEMFCs has been analyzed. Experimental investigation is performed for understanding the mechanical endurance of the bare membranes under different loading conditions. Tensile tests are conducted to compare the mechanical property evolution. Taking the test data as a desired mechanical response, . a model with both viscoelasticity and plasticity involved in was built and investigated by mechanics-based simulations which are performed using the finite element method (ABAQUS). By optimizing the parameters of viscoelastic-plastic model, the best agreement to the desired mechanical behaviour was achieved. And the parameters will be compared and analyzed to find out the variation of the polymer’s structure during the degradation process.

Copyright

© 2015, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Y. Xiao
AU  - C. Cho
PY  - 2015/07
DA  - 2015/07
TI  - The Investigation on the Mechanical Endurance Degradation of Nafion Membrane
BT  - Proceedings of the 2015 International Conference on Electrical, Automation and Mechanical Engineering
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 176
EP  - 179
SN  - 2352-5401
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/eame-15.2015.48
DO  - 10.2991/eame-15.2015.48
ID  - Xiao2015/07
ER  -