The influence of different heat treatment temperatures on forming property of bipolar plate for proton-exchange membrane fuel cell

Bipolar plate was one key component of proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC), and it was also an important factor which affects cost performance of battery stack. It was difficult to form flow channel of bipolar plate under the micro scale. This paper puts forward the method of accumulative, and set up the corresponding experimental apparatus, selecting aluminum alloy 3003 sheet metal with the size of 11 mm×11 mm×0.6 mm as bipolar plate, and conducting heat treatment on sheet metal under room temperature and 260, 360, 450°C four different temperatures, then we can complete straight flow channel by forming device. The paper studies the impact of different heat treatment temperatures on forming force, forming depth and the resilient rate. Results show that we can consider the influence factors of forming force and flow channel forming depth, and adopting sheet metal after the process of completely annealing in the later forming, it can improve the forming performance and forming accuracy.