An overlapping domain decomposition method for a polymer exchange membrane fuel cell model

The structure of channels, cell material and operation parameters are usually implemented in different ways from anode to cathode in the actual work to seek better performance for polymer exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). However, the asymmetrical structure of such specific design often leads to non-matching grids in the numerical simulation of PEMFC, especially when the structured grids are used. Besides, different mesh sizes are often used in the simulation for anode and cathode in order to obtain both high accuracy and relatively low computational cost. In this paper, an overlapping domain decomposition finite element method is studied to deal with the non-matching grids for a simplified two-dimensional single-phase PEMFC model. Numerical experiments demonstrate that our methods are able to deal with PEMFC simulation on the non-matching grids with fast convergence and low mass balance error.