Investigation into mechanical behavior of the current collector for the molten carbonate fuel cell through finite element analysis using hexahedral mesh coarsening

The current collector for the molten carbonate fuel cell (MCFC), which is a repeated structure of sheared protrusions, is manufactured from the three-stage forming process. For the precise and efficient simulation of the mechanical behavior of the current collector, the results of the forming process such as the deformed geometry and the distribution of plastic strain should be considered properly. In this work, an efficient method to construct the simulation model of the current collector considering the results of the forming process was introduced. First, hexahedral mesh coarsening was first conducted using the simulation results of the three-stage forming process of a sheared protrusion. Then, the equivalent plastic strain was mapped from the old mesh to the newly generated mesh. Finally, the simulation model for the current collector was constructed by duplicating and reflecting the newly generated mesh. For the verification of the proposed method, various numerical examples were investigated. The simulation results using the proposed method were compared with the experimental results of the three-point bending at 20 °C (room temperature) and 650 °C (operating temperature of the MCFC). From the examples for verification, it was found that the proposed simulation for the current collector was found to be efficient and applicable to the simulation of the mechanical behavior of the current collector for practical application.