NUMERICAL STUDY OF MULTIPLE DROPLET DYNAMICS IN A PEMFC AIR FLOW CHANNEL

고분자전해질막 연료전지의 공기유로 내에서의 다중 액적 거동에 대한 수치적 연구

The water droplet motion and the interaction between the droplets in a PEMFC air flow channel with multiple pores, through which water emerges, is studied numerically by solving the equations governing the conservation of mass and momentum. The liquid-gas interface is tracked by a level set method which is based on a sharp-interface representation for accurately imposing the matching conditions at the interface. The method is modified to implement the contact angle conditions on the walls and pores. The dynamic interaction between the droplets growing on multiple pores while keeping the total water flow rate through pores constant is investigated by conducting the computations until the droplet motion exhibits a periodic pattern. The numerical results show that the droplet merging caused by increasing the number of pores is not effective for water removal and that the contact angle of channel wall strongly affects water management in the PEMFC air flow channel.